This Berlin Venture Fund Backed Airbnb Early On: Where It's Placing Bets Now

Despite pandemic challenges, the travel sector is positioned to pop with investor love. Lakestar, a Berlin-based venture capital fund, wants to get a piece of the next big travel startup as the sector's winners and losers emerge from the pandemic. Remarkably, Lakestar is even backing consumer-facing startups at a time when many investors have soured on companies that compete with the global giants, favoring business-to-business startups instead. Lakestar buys stakes in startups in all types of industries worldwide. But travel is a specialty. It has invested more euros in travel startups based in Europe than any other venture investor. Its well-timed investment in Airbnb generated fat paper returns when that startup went public in December. Feeling emboldened from recent windfalls, Lakestar upped the ante this year. It launched a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, with the intention to take a startup public. (For context, see Skift's explainer on SPACs.) In recent weeks, Lakestar SPAC I signed a letter of intent to take public HomeToGo, a vacation rental price comparison search and software sales company that Lakestar's venture division had invested in. Venture investing remains a separate activity for Lakestar. Its venture bets in travel besides Airbnb include HomeToGo (price-comparison search for vacation rentals), Limehome (which manages short-term rentals with hotel-like service), Omio (metasearch for point-to-point travel including ground transportation), GetYourGuide (a travel agency for tours and activities), and Impala (a startup specializing in hotel data connectivity and next-gen distribution). The Problem With Consumer-Facing Startups Entrep