Vacation Rental Services Startup Guesty Secures $1.5 Million in Funding

Guesty, a startup providing reservation and property management services for Airbnb hosts, secured $1.5 million in seed funding from Silicon Valley angels, YCombinator and Magma Venture Partners.

The 15-employee startup, which has its developers and operations in Israel and marketing staff in the U.S., where most if its customers are located, bills itself as "your personal Airbnb assistant," although co-founder and CEO Amiad Soto tells Skift the company wants to expand to additional apartment sharing and vacation rental platforms, including FlipKey and HomeAway.

Among its varied services for hosts, Guesty responds to guest inquiries and screens guests, optimizing listings and even partners with cleaning companies if hosts don't have cleaning services.

Guesty previously was called SuperHost, but changed its name because it wanted to deemphasize providing logistics services and also knew of the launch of Airbnb's SuperHost program, and sought to avoid confusion, Soto says.

Soto says Guesty will use the seed funding to hire additional developers and expand its platform despite an unspecified partnership with Airbnb.