Airbnb speaks out against proposed regulation
As the cost of living continues to rise in Boston, many residents have turned to an unexpected source for extra income: their apartments. Families struggling to pay rent or foot monthly bills have found that home-sharing platforms like Airbnb have offered them a whole new source of cash flow — but that’s all in jeopardy. The Boston City Council is taking up a new proposal from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh that would limit short-term rentals through Airbnb and similar services to property owners. Airbnb is fighting back, and wrote a letter to Walsh and the City Council saying, “the unintended consequence of this prohibition would be to increase the burden of housing costs for long-term renters.” Walsh holds that short-term rentals actually drive up housing prices because landlords rent apartments to tourists by the night, rather than people seeking a home. [The Boston Globe]
InsightSquared raises a cool $23M for revenue intelligence platform
InsightSquared, a leading provider of revenue intelligence solutions for growing businesses, announced this week that it has raised a $23 million Series D round led by Tola Capital. Existing investors Accomplice, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Two Sigma and NextView also participated in the round. The financing will be used to help drive growth of the platform, expand to serve enterprise customers and accelerate the company's marketing efforts. [Press Release]
Marriott and PlacePass partner up for summer travel season
Want to take an authentic French pastry-making class in Paris? Or how about a private museum tour of London? Boston traveltech startup Placepass has partnered with Marriott to provide travelers with “expert-curated” recommendations to help them find the best things to do on their vacations. Marriott Moments, a new experiential travel platform powered by PlacePass, will allow Marriott customers to find and book experiences at over 1,000 destinations around the world. Marriott led PlacePass' Series A round last March. [Press Release]
DraftKings to enter the sports betting market
It was a good week for DraftKings, one of the largest tech startups in Massachusetts. On Monday, the Supreme Court struck down a federal law from 1992 that banned gambling on football, basketball, baseball and other sports, giving states the green light to legalize sports betting. DraftKings, an online fantasy sports provider, didn’t wait for the paint to dry: Co-founder and chief executive Jason Robins quickly issued a statement that the company would enter the sports betting market and diversify its product offerings following the Supreme Court’s decision. [Built In Boston]
Legal tech startup LinkSquares raises $2M seed round
Lawyers: Want to stop sifting through hundreds of pages of documents when reviewing contracts? LinkSquares, a Boston-based startup on a mission to bring the legal industry into the 21st century, raised $2.16 million in seed funding this week to help you do just that. The round was led by Lawrence Field and Charlie Stephenson of Regent Private Capital. The startup provides AI-powered legal contract analytics, and aims to make manual review of contracts obsolete with its software, which uses machine learning to extract key information from pages. The seed financing will be used to grow LinkSquares’ sales team and to invest in the company’s technology. [Boston Business Journal]
Boston unicorn Circle reels in $110M in funding for new crypto dollar
Circle came onto Boston’s fintech scene in 2013 and has been attempting to bring cryptocurrency into the mainstream ever since. This week, the company got one step closer, landing a $110 million Series E investment from Chinese bitcoin mining company Bitmain and announcing the launch of a “USD Coin,” whose value will be closely connected to the U.S. Dollar. The move is intended to promote secure transactions — which was pretty much the whole point of cryptocurrency in the first place. [Built In Boston]
