Why these companies founded by AOL alums are partnering up

Three companies headed up by a batch of AOL alums are carpooling down the road to startup success.
Roadside assistance app Urgent.ly will now be integrated into Tollsmart and Cost2Drive, two apps founded by Jim Kovarik, a former general manager at AOL Travel.

This follows months of user testing on the website of Cost2Drive, an application that allows users to mete out gas costs for their trips. Tollsmart, founded in April, calculates the amount of tolls travelers can expect to pay. It’s like “MapQuest with tolls,” explained Kovarik. (MapQuest is owned by AOL, btw.)
“It’s obvious that our services are pretty complementary,” said Kovarik.
Added Urgent.ly SVP of Product Development Rick Robinson, it’s “a partnership that’s a natural step for us.”
Urgent.ly has six cofounders, three of whom are AOL alumni; the company used to be run out of AOL Fishbowl Labs. As for C2G, the parent company of Cost2Drive, it was launched by four former AOL employees.
Discussing their background on the phone, Kovarik, the president of C2G and CEO of Tollsmart, and Robinson, reminisced.
Or at least, they tried to.
Robinson’s time at AOL was “many moons ago,” he said. “Jim, I’m sure you were there for most of that,” he added.
Urgent.ly was founded in September 2013. It now runs out of Tysons Corner, with a full-time staff of 10 and a development team in India.
Launched in 2008, C2G is run by its five cofounders and headquartered in Great Falls, with a development team in Serbia. Tollsmart has two employee-cofounders: Kovarik and coder-artist Leonid Iogansen.