New York-based MyPlace, a social network designed to help friends share their private homes, has raised $5.8 million in seed funding led by Freestyle Ventures. The platform was originally launched in 2019 by entrepreneurs Zach Bell and Rameet Chawla as a way for them to share their private homes with their friends. Since then, the platform has grown into a social network used by thousands of people in 86 countries.
The pair told TechCrunch in an interview that at the time of the launch, they were both traveling for work and didn’t want their homes to sit empty for a long period of time. They wanted their friends to take advantage of their empty homes, so they created a Squarespace website and added calendars on the website to indicate when their homes would be empty. Then, they gave the password to the site to around 100 of their friends.
“We indicated when our houses were available and told our friends to let us know when they wanted to stay there,” Bell, the CEO of the…
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