Skift Take
Social home-swapping is a subset of a sector that a giant like AirBnb serves, and maybe it just needs to be an added functionality than a whole new startup.
Florent Peyre, the co-founder and president of CasaHop, a social travel site focused on home-swapping, has left the company, reports AllThingsD. The New York-based startup soft-launched in April, and received $1.2 million in seed funding round led by Lerer Ventures and included First Round Capital, Betaworks and many other angels. It was also the first company to emerge from Lerer Ventures’ incubator, Soho Tech Labs, the other being not-such-a-huge-hit-yet RebelMouse.
The CasaHop Twitter feed, very active otherwise, hasn’t been updated since Oct 5.
Dennis adds: Unlike home- and apartment-sharing sites such as Airbnb and 9flats, CasaHop is based on the more-limited premise of home exchanges between social-network members: You stay in my home, I’ll stay in yours.
The home exchanges can be scheduled at various times, and don’t have to occur simultaneously, but this limited market dynamic could have been a factor in any difficulties in scaling the business.
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