Hostaway has raised $175 million in a funding round led by Boston-based PSG Equity. The funding will be used by Hostaway to expand globally, grow headcount, and pursue both organic and inorganic opportunities to expand market share. The company was co-founded by Marcus Rader, the company's CEO, who said that he and his co-founders came upon the idea of building Hostaway not because of their prior expertise in hospitality (none of them had ever been involved with that industry) but because they had actually all had previous experience of startups raising money. They honed in on vacation rentals and hospitality because, in 2015, the landscape in that market looked fairly open. “The odds were against us, since most of our peers were founded by people active in the vacation rental space,” said Rader, who said the pandemic proved to be a catalyst for the business. “We could see the global macroeconomic trends taking shape,” he said, highlighting the trend for working from home, the rising price of real estate, and digital nomads.
TechCrunch (05/31/23) Ingrid Lunden