Thursday, October 18, 2018

Weekend Lugging Luggage Around In LA Spawns Startup

A "complete nightmare" experience by two LA tourists, lugging their luggage around town after checking out of their Airbnb, has spawned a new startup with links to Techstars. New York-based Vertoe, it just raised $1.85M in a seed funding round for its startup, whose founders, Sid Khattri and Neha Kesarwani, ended up hauling their suitcases around Los Angeles for six hours, turning what had been an effort to "explore LA" into a "complete nightmare". The funding round came from Ingwe Capital, ff Venture Capital, Techstars, and several angel investors. Techstars runs a number of startup accelerator programs in LA; Vertoe was part of a Techstars program in New York. Vertoe offers up short-term storage of luggage, aimed at people who are traveling and staying at Airbnb and other locations, who don't know what to do with their luggage in-between locations. The company says it now offers up its service in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Washington DC--but not in Los Angeles.