A Denver-based startup that partners with hosts to design and furnish short-term rentals at wholesale prices raised $2 million in seed funding to enroll 100,000 new rentals by 2024.
Showplace is a wholesale marketplace where owners of short-term rentals can sign up to receive discounted prices from 50 partner brands. The startup also offers a service to help hosts list new short-term rentals on Airbnb (Nasdaq: ABNB) or Vrbo by designing their space, selecting the furnishings and staging the homes.
As of June, the startup was working with 10,000 listings and had placed $8 million worth of products into short-term rentals. Showplace plans to use the $2 million seed funding to improve its technology in order to automate more of the process and expand to more listings, said Justin Miller, its chief executive.
“For me, personally, I envision that at Showplace we want to help enable the next 1 million Airbnb hosts and operators to successfully start Airbnb businesses in the future,” Miller said. “Like today, it’s very risky. It’s hard to do. There are over 200 items that you have to buy to start a listing, but I think that our depth of knowledge, experience and technology will help us scale our service.”
Minneapolis-based Matchstick Ventures led the $2 million funding round. Also participating were Boost VC and Taurus VC, as well as several angel investors, including Lyft CEO Logan Green. Other angel investors were Matt Van Horn, the chief executive of June; Garrett Smallwood, the chief executive of Wag; Jonathan Chen, the vice president of corporate development and strategy at Twitter; and James Beshara, the former director of product at Airbnb.
Miller said he chose Denver as the base of Showplace because he believes it’s becoming a hub for travel technology. AirDNA, which analyzes short-term rental data, is based in Denver, as are vacation rental management companies Evolve and Travelers Haven. Denver is also home to Exclusive Resorts, a members-only luxury vacation club, and Inspirato, a luxury travel subscription brand.
“We really are proudly a Denver company,” Miller said. “The reasoning behind that is actually quite calculated. Being part of that Denver ecosystem, we really strive to add to that travel tech hub.”
The startup currently employs 10 people, three of whom are in Denver.
Showplace is the third startup founded by Miller. He co-founded Pillow, a short-term rental management company that helped tenants list their apartments without violating their leases. Pillow had raised $16 million in capital before it was sold to Expedia in 2018.
Miller also founded Notehall, an online marketplace used by college students to buy and sell class notes. Notehall was featured on the ABC reality show Shark Tank in 2009 and sold to Chegg, an education technology company, in 2011.
