Airbnb Raises $112 Million for Vacation Rental Business

Airbnb, the site that lets you rent everything from spare rooms in apartments and homes to cabins, tree houses, boats, parking spaces and even the country of Liechtenstein, has raised a significant sum of money to rival major online travel sites.

The San Francisco-based company has received $112 million in a second round of funding from well-known Silicon Valley investor Andreessen Horowitz. Other investors participating include DST Global and General Catalyst.

Andreessen Horowitz contributed about half of the round. Jeff Jordan, one of the newest general partners at the firm (and who recently left OpenTable), wrote about the investment in a blog post.

TechCrunch previously reported that the company was seeking more than $100 million at a $1 billion-plus valuation.

The second round of funding for the company is astonishing, given that its first round totaled $7.8 million.

The company said the capital will be used to generate new growth and hire additional employees.

The vacation rental start-up was recently featured in a WSJ story as having some of the most enticing job perks, such as wine and cheese mixers, rooftop barbecues and an air-guitar contest.

Airbnb has experienced extremely strong growth over the past year, and now has booked more than two million nights. It also receives more than 30 million page views per month.

The company expects to grow internationally, including in markets such as Germany, the U.K., France and Brazil, where it is already seeing some traffic.

Earlier this month, HomeAway, which owns several vacation home rental property sites around the world, raised $231 million in stock from its IPO.

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Just as the atom bomb was the weapon that was supposed to render war obsolete, the Internet seems like capitalism’s ultimate feat of self-destructive genius, an economic doomsday device rendering it impossible for anyone to ever make a profit off anything again. It’s especially hopeless for those whose work is easily digitized and accessed free of charge.

— Author Tim Kreider on not getting paid for one’s work