A San Francisco startup is looking to hone in on the lucrative alternative accommodations market for business travelers. 2nd Address has raised $10 million to expand its Airbnb-style platform that’s intended for business people looking for long-term stays in furnished homes.
GV (formerly Google Ventures) led the round with participation from existing investors including Foundation Capital, Amicus Capital, Pierre Lamond and others.
In a blog post, CEO Chung-Man Tam says the company will use the funding to develop its product, including building new tools for hosts to manage their homes and integrations with corporate booking, reporting and billing systems.
The site currently offers more than 3,400 listings in five markets - San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Washington and Boston - and will use the funding to expand to new cities in the United States and to add a wider variety of accommodations in every market.
2nd Address says the platform is used by executives from companies such as Google, SAP and Deloitte and educators and researchers from universities such as Northwestern and Stanford.
2nd Address was formerly HomeSuite. It went through a rebranding in 2017 and shifted its focus to extended-stay rentals for business travelers.
That’s also a niche Airbnb has been targeting with its growing Airbnb for Work segment, which it says counts nearly 700,000 companies as clients as of August 2018.
In Europe, it vies with Homelike, which has raised about $18 million. They both compete in parallel with the serviced apartment market, led by companies like BridgeStreet.
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