Kindred co-founders Justine Palefsky and Tas Amina. Image Credits:<\/strong> Kindred<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

One example of a use case involves a member who is a female founder in her early 30s living in Mexico City with her dog. She needed to travel to San Francisco frequently for work, but found it to be expensive and difficult to find places that would take her dog. She booked over 80 nights in her first eight months on Kindred staying in San Francisco, New York and a few other destinations, according to Palefsky. In return, she hosted over 80 nights in her Mexico City home while she was out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cStories like this really showed us that the potential for Kindred is actually far bigger than what we had initially realized,\u201d Palefsky told TechCrunch. \u201cWe have the opportunity to not only capture a share of the existing travel market, but can grow the travel market altogether.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) led the Series A, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Caffeinated Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Outset Capital. New individual investors also put money in the round, including former Khosla investor Evan Moore and Figma CEO Dylan Field. To date, the startup has raised a total of $26.75 million. It has 20 employees, up from 10 a year ago.<\/span><\/p>\n

Kindred plans to use the new capital in part\u00a0 to expand geographically \u2014 in North America as well as in several European cities this year, such as London, Berlin and Amsterdam. Today, it\u2019s active in over 20 markets in North America, including New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Seattle, Denver, Austin, Vancouver and Mexico City. The company also plans to invest in its product and technology, including Matchmaker, an algorithm it\u2019s developed that will make AI-powered recommendations to members.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur goal is to eventually be everywhere, but we\u2019re initially focusing on major cities where there\u2019s high overlap in supply and demand, and where we can benefit from density with our local photography and cleaning operations,\u201d Palefsky said.<\/span><\/p>\n

NEA Partner Vanessa Larco, who has joined Kindred\u2019s board, believes that as short-term rental platforms have \u201cincreasingly professionalized, they have left open a massive untapped opportunity for a true sharing economy that uniquely enables peer-to-peer sharing of primary residences, instead of renting investment properties.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She added: \u201cThe market size of primary residences is massive compared to investment homes and Kindred has demonstrated that by delivering trust and convenience to unlock more primary residences, they can bring net new home inventory to the vacation rental market.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/br><\/br><\/br><\/p>\n