The man behind HouseTrip, Airbnb’s European ascendant rival

Arnaud Bertrand isn’t your typical startup founder. Where brogramming cliches about “crushing it” bounce around Silicon Valley’s coding galleys, the French entrepreneur is mild-mannered and unassuming. Where his peers are brash and bombastic, the 27-year-old is careful to keep his monster-sized ambitions under control.

And yet the ambition is there — and company he runs, online vacation rental company HouseTrip, is doing well right now. It just raised $40 million and is pushing the much-vaunted Airbnb into second place in Europe.