This article was published on June 26, 2012

CasaHop, the social home swapping site co-founded by ex-HuffPo CTO Paul Berry, raises $1.2 million


CasaHop, the social home swapping site co-founded by ex-HuffPo CTO Paul Berry, raises $1.2 million

CasaHop, the social home exchange startup started within prolific New York VC firm Lerer Ventures’ Soho Tech Labs incubator, by former Huffington Post folks, has secured $1.2 million in funding according to a regulatory filing.

CasaHop is actually the first startup former HuffPo execs Jonah Peretti, Ken Lerer, Eric Hippeau, Eric Ashman, Greg Coleman and Paul Berry have incubated through Soho Tech Labs (the second one is RebelMouse). Berry is listed as co-founder and CEO of the social travel site.

Likely, the capital injection comes from Lerer Ventures and other VC firms.

We’ve reached out to CasaHop for clarification on that.

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Not unlike Airbnb (and others), CasaHop offers users an alternative to hotels for accommodation when traveling. The site lets people leverage their existing social networks to pair up with people they can trust and arrange home swapping.

The startup says the service is ideal for family vacations and weekend getaways.

At the moment, CasaHop is free to join, and the company doesn’t charge for listing properties or even a commission trading. From their FAQ:

If we make a service people love, we know there will be ways to add some paid services such as car rentals, flights, and travel insurance to sustain the company for the long term. But that is a long way off.

Right now our focus is to find you the perfect house swap so you use CasaHop again and again.

CasaHop was co-founded by president Florent Peyre, who previously started Gilt City, part of Gilt Groupe. Its chief technology officer, Ben Regenspan, was previously Lead Social Developer at Huffington Post.

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