RVshare, a peer-to-peer recreational vehicle rental platform,
has secured a $50 investment from Tritium Partners to accelerate growth of its marketplace.
This is RVshare’s first funding round since it launched in
2013. It currently serves more than 60,000 RV owners offering options from travel trailers to luxury motorhomes.
“Even though we’ve had investors knocking on our doors for
the last four years, this whole venture was about seizing the opportunity and recognizing
that the timing was right and the partner was finally right,” says Joel Clark,
RVshare’s co-founder and president.
Tritium’s managing partners, Phil Siegel and David Lack, led
the first investment in vacation rental company HomeAway when they were at
Austin Ventures. RVshare’s newly announced CEO, Jon Gray, was a senior
executive at HomeAway.
The investment comes just a week after rival service Outdoorsy captured a $25 million round of its own from Aviva Ventures and Altos Ventures, with participation from existing investors Tandem Capital and Autotech Ventures.
Rental inspiration
Clark says it hopes to replicate HomeAway’s success of turning
an emerging concept mainstream – in this case a hybrid of transportation and
lodging.
“I led HomeAway's first investment and I was there the day
they rang the IPO bell on Wall Street and the parallels between HomeAway and
RVshare are significant,” says Siegel.
“HomeAway, which was ultimately acquired for $3.9 billion by
Expedia, took vacation home rentals from a fringe category to a celebrated
mainstay of global travel. With a massive lead and substantial funding, we see
RVshare doing the same for RV rentals.”
Clark says RVshare will use the funding to “double down on our
product, double down on our marketing and add some more key executives.”
He estimates there are 15 million RVs in the United States that sit idle for
about 50 weeks of the year, while at the same time 66% of
people say they hope to someday travel by RV.
“But because of the burden of access to RVs, because
ownership is so prohibitively expensive, most people think it has to stay on
their bucket list,” he says.
“These dynamics are begging for a connecting marketplace. We
connect that supply and demand and we provide free 24/7 roadside assistance and
industry-leading insurance.”