 | |
| Type of business | C corporation[1] |
|---|---|
| Available in | English,French,German,Italian,Polish,Portuguese,Russian,Simplified Chinese andSpanish[2] |
| Founded | 2 April 2003 (New Hampshirenonprofit organization)[3] 3 May 2011 (Delawarefor-profit corporation)[4] |
| Area served | Global |
| Founder | Casey Fenton Daniel Hoffer Sebastian Le Tuan Leonardo Bassani da Silveira[5] |
| Key people | Patrick Dugan (CEO) Francesco Deparis (Director of Operations)[6] |
| Products | Homestay |
| Services | Social networking service |
| URL | www |
| Users | 12,000,000 users |
| Launched | 12 June 2004; 21 years ago (2004-06-12)[7] |
| Part ofa series on |
| Homestays |
|---|
| Hospitality exchange services |
| Hospitality for work |
| Hospitality for money |
| Home exchange and others |
CouchSurfing is ahospitality exchange service by which users can request free short-termhomestays or interact with other people who are interested intravel. It is accessible via awebsite andmobile app. It uses asubscription business model, and while hosts are not allowed to charge for lodging, members in some countries must pay a fee to access the platform.
Couchsurfing was conceived by computer programmer andNew Hampshire native Casey Fenton in 1999, when he was 21 years old.[1][8][5] The idea arose after Fenton found a cheap flight fromBoston to Iceland but did not have lodging. Fenton hacked into a database of theUniversity of Iceland and randomly e-mailed 1,500 students asking for a homestay. He received between 50 and 100 offers and chose to stay at the home of an Icelandicrhythm and blues singer.[8] On the return flight to Boston, he came up with the idea to create the website. He registered the couchsurfing.comdomain name on 12 June 1999.[8][9] Fenton was also inspired by a trip he took 2 years earlier to Egypt, where he was shown around by a local.[7]
Couchsurfing International Inc. was formed on 2 April 2003 as aNew Hampshirenonprofit corporation,[3] with plans to apply for501(c)(3) tax exemption.
The website was launched on 12 June 2004[8] with the cooperation ofDan Hoffer, Sebastien Le Tuan, and Leonardo Silveira.[5]
From 2006 until the company raised financing in 2011, development of the website occurred mostly at events called "Couchsurfing Collectives", in which members met to voluntarily improve the website.[8] Collectives took place inMontreal,Vienna, New Zealand,Rotterdam,Costa Rica,Samara,Alaska,Istanbul, and Thailand.[7][8][10] However, the collectively-coded website was full ofsoftware bugs andcrashes were common. Many members believed that the website needed to be redesigned from scratch.[7] The collectives were also hindered by volunteers, who just came to party, as well as by tax laws in each jurisdiction.[7]
In June 2006, problems with the websitedatabase resulted in much of it being irrevocably lost.[8][11] Founder Casey Fenton posted online asking for help.[12] A Couchsurfing Collective was underway in Montreal at the time and those in attendance raised $8,000 in donations and committed to recreate the website.[8] In 2007,Google search volume for couchsurfing.org overtook the search volume forHospitality Club.[13]
The company applied for501(c)(3) tax status as anonprofit organization in November 2007 but tax exempt status was rejected by theInternal Revenue Service in early 2011.[1][14] The assets then needed to be acquired from the New Hampshire non-profit, which including legal fees, was to cost $1 million.[7] In August 2011, a private for-profitDelawareC corporation, also called Couchsurfing International, Inc., which was formed on 3 May 2011,[4][15][16] raised $7.6 million in a first-round financing led byBenchmark Capital andOmidyar Network and acquired the assets of the New Hampshire company.[17][18][19][20] The New Hampshire non-profit company was dissolved on 4 November 2011.[3]
The conversion to a for-profit corporation was objected to by many members since the guiding principles of the original non profit organisation promised that CouchSurfing operates as a nonprofit, a promise that was broken by Fenton and Hoffer.[1] Founder Casey Fenton said he received 1,500 emails in the days after announcing the conversion.[1]
The company was briefly certified as aB corporation (mistakenly labeled as aBenefit corporation in a blog post by Casey Fenton),[21] but that certification was eventually removed.[22][1][23][24]
In August 2012, Couchsurfing received an additional $15 million in funding from an investor group led byGeneral Catalyst Partners, with participation byMenlo Ventures, as well as existing investorsBenchmark Capital andOmidyar Network. The additional funding brought the company's total funding raised to $22.6 million.[15] That year, the company launched mobile apps foriOS andAndroid.[25]
Tony Espinoza, previously vice president and general manager ofsocial-network games atMTV, was CEO from April 2012 to October 2013.[7][18] Under his leadership, driven by an aggressive advertising campaign, membership doubled; however, new users were less interested in hosting other travelers and in the "pay it forward" spirit of other members.[7] Tensions between Fenton and Espinoza led to Fenton being fired from the company he founded, although at that time, he kept his seat on the board of directors.[7] The company rented office space in San Francisco.[26] By the end of Espinoza's tenure, the company had depleted half of its financing and laid off 40% of its staff.[7]
Jennifer Billock, who had been head of product marketing, then took over as CEO.[7][27]
In 2015, Couchsurfing required additional funding but did not have the metrics to raise aSeries C round. Instead, the company received funding from Dugan Katragadda, a branch of Valencia Street Capital,[28] led by Patrick Dugan (born 1980), who previously worked forNetSuite,Piper Jaffray,Palantir Technologies and Practice Fusion, an electronic medical records company.[29] Dugan's investment was large enough to reconstitute theboard of directors.[7] Casey Fenton was removed from the board of directors due to differences with management and has since no longer been involved in the day-to-day operations of the company.[7] Fenton later founded Upstock Inc..[30][better source needed]
In June 2016, the company added a feature to its mobile app called "hangouts" that enables members to quickly meet with other nearby members.[31]
In May 2020, during theCOVID-19 pandemic, the company switched to asubscription business model requiring users in some countries to pay a fee to access the platform.[32]
