9flats

9flats was launched by German internet entrepreneur Stephan Uhrenbacher – founder of Qype, and former head of northern European operations for lastminute.com.[5]

The founders secured funding from venture capital fund E.ventures (CityDeal/Groupon) and launched 9flats.com in February 2011 with an inventory of 5,000 places.[6]

In May 2011, 9flats secured another round of investment from venture capital funds Redpoint Ventures (HomeAway), ProFounder (ex-lastminute.com) and Greycroft Partners, bringing the total funding to US$10 million.[7][8][9]

In late 2011, 9flats became the first well-known European or North American company in the social travel space to open an Asian office in Singapore, led by VP of Asia Ng Wei Leen, establishing a presence ahead of global competitors like Airbnb.[10][11]

In January 2012, 9flats completed a round of funding led by T-Venture, the venture capital arm of Deutsche Telekom AG. This round included Redpoint Ventures and E-Venture Capital Partners (Hamburg).[12]

In August 2012, 9flats acquired Toronto-based competitor iStopOver, extending its service to North America and growing its property base to 100.000 apartments.[13][14][15]

In August 2012, Wired ranked the company 6th on its list of hottest startups in Berlin.[16]

In March 2013, 9flats introduced bitcoin as payment method.[17][18]

In February 2014, Roman Bach was named CEO; he vacated that post in April 2016. Uhrenbacher moved to the advisory board.[5]

In 2014, 9flats announced that it is the first profitable player in the social travel industry.[5]

In November 2014, 9flats made prepayment optional and allowed user to pay with cash.[19]

In October 2016, 9flats acquired Wimdu.[20][21]

In December 2016, 9flats sold Wimdu to the Novasol brand of Wyndham Destinations.[22]

• Official website