Website www.9flats.com Founded March 2011 | Headquarters Hamburg Type Privately held company | |
Industry social networking service Key people Stephan Uhrenbacher (Chairman, Founder)
Roman Bach (Co-Founder) Profiles | ||
9flats is a peer-to-peer property rental company for private accommodations. Travelers book to stay in other people’s residences and property owners rent out their private accommodations.
It was launched by German internet entrepreneur Stephan Uhrenbacher – founder of Qype, and former head of northern European operations for lastminute.com. The site is a European competitor to the US-based Airbnb. In 2014 Roman Bach was named CEO; he vacated that post in April, 2016 . Uhrenbacher moved to the advisory board.
History
The founders secured funding from venture capital fund E.ventures (CityDeal/Groupon) and launched 9flats.com in February 2011 with an inventory of 5,000 places. The company was based in nine different locations around the world, but is now headquartered in Hamburg.
In May 2011, 9flats secured another round of investment from venture capital funds Redpoint Ventures (HomeAway), ProFounder (ex-lastminute.com) and Greycroft Partners, bringing the total funding to US$10 million. In January 2012, 9flats completed a round of funding led by T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom AG. This round included Redpoint Ventures and E-Venture Capital Partners (Hamburg).
In April 2012, 9flats had over 50,000 members and 30,000 hosts in 104 countries.
In late 2011, 9flats became the first well-known European or North American company in the social travel space to open an Asian office in Singapore, led by VP of Asia Ng Wei Leen, establishing a presence ahead of global competitors like Airbnb.
In August 2012, 9flats acquired the Toronto-based competitor istopover, extending its service to North America and growing its property base to 100.000 apartments.
9flats is growing by 300% despite tight competition. In March 2013 9flats introduced bitcoin as payment method and is ever since supporting projects around the cryptocurrency.
In 2014 9flats announced that it is the first profitable player in the Social Travel Industry.
In November 2014 9flats introduced a new payment option: book now, pay later.