Social-travel site CasaHop takes big step with $1.2M in funding

Author: Dennis Schaal

CasaHop, a startup which taps into your social networks for home-exchange matches, picked up $1.2 million in seed funding round led by Lerer Ventures.

The social travel site is the first to emerge from Lerer Ventures’ incubator, Soho Tech Labs.

Other companies and individuals involved in the seed round include Andre Balazs, First Round Capital, Betaworks, David Tisch, Bob Pittman, Jonah Goodhart, Dave Morgan and Nicholas Negroponte.

A home-exchange site, CasaHop taps into users’ Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts, and uses psychographic data, ranging from educational backgrounds to musical passions and other pursuits, and then finds relevant apartment and country home listings.

Florent Peyre, co-founder and president of CasaHop, says the funding will help the roughly 14-employee company scale faster and introduce new products, including one oriented toward travel clubs.

Peyre previously was vice president of business development and strategy at Gilt City.

The other co-founder is Paul Berry, previously chief technology officer at The Huffington Post.

CasaHop’s total funding to date is $1.3 million.