Splacer, With $1.4M In New Funding, Is Airbnb For Event Spaces

Splacer, the Tel Aviv-based marketplace for listing and renting out creative event space, today announced that it has raised $1.4 million in seed funding led by Carmel Ventures. A number of angel investors, including Shlomo Kramer, Sam Ben Avraham, and Eyal Shaked, also participated in the round,

Alongside the funding announcement, Splacer is also going live with a beta product in New York City.

What Airbnb does for longer-term stays in a home, Splacer does for short-term event spaces. Users can list personal or commercial space, set prices, and users can rent them out for different types of events.

The company was founded in Tel Aviv by architects Lihi Gerstner and Adi Biran, and launched in the fall of 2014. Splacer has since grown to have over 100 event spaces listed in Israel, and is launching with 70 spaces listed in New York City.

The Splacer founders told TechCrunch that the platform isn’t meant for big parties, though of course that will likely end up being a minor use case. Rather, Splacer’s predominant use cases thus far have been company off-sites, photo shoots, and art exhibitions.

Not all spaces are approved to be on the network, as the company wants to curate the assortment of spaces listed in the marketplace. Users can rent spaces both by the hour or by the day. Plus, users are offered a network of service providers, ranging from caterers to musicians to photographers (and even aerial dancers), so that they can plan the entirety of an event through a single portal.

So far, Splacer has worked with companies like Facebook, Fiverr, Outbrain, and Playbuzz (among others) in Tel Aviv to offer creative spaces for corporate events

Comments

Kodak Is Bringing Back Super 8

If you’ve always wanted to shoot video using the tools your parents probably used to film each other naked then Yves Behar and Kodak have a product for you. Super 8 was a cartridge-based film standard that became surprisingly popular after its release in 1965. It has remained popular with vintage film buffs and now Eastman Kodak is working on a $400 to $750 Super 8 camera for the modern auteur. Behars designed the camera to look retro and boxy while cleaving to a more material design aesthetic. The problem? Film is hard to get these days and even with the support of a Super 8 subculture it will be hard to see just who is going to produce this stuff profitably. Heck, the WSJ expects it to cost $50 just to process the stuff. However stranger things have happened – Holga, for example – and the market is a strange mistress. “This is no longer the classic script of a war of digital versus analog,” Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke. “What it really is now is the co...

Five budget-friendly open source storage servers

Storage is essential for the enterprise: Data must be stored. Data must be retrieved. Data must be shared. Data must be secured. At the same time, storage must not consume the entirety of your IT budget. Fortunately, you can find effective solutions in the world of open source. Outside of cost effectiveness, one of the biggest benefits of these solutions is the ability to modify them to perfectly fit your needs. You can make minor changes or even roll your own storage solution based on one of these tools. If you want enterprise support and a "solution in a can" that will meet just about any enterprise storage need, you should turn to Red Hat or SUSE. Both Linux-based companies offer some of the most powerful enterprise-ready tools on the market. But if you'd rather get your hands dirty and craft something of your own—something that won't demolish your budget—these five open source tools are a great place to start. 1: ownCloud ownCloud ( Figure ...

Intel announces the first 14 nanometre processor

At the Computex conference in Taipei, chipmaker Intel has revealed a fanless mobile PC reference design using the first of its next-generation 14nm "Broadwell" processors. The 2 in 1 pictured here is a 12.5" screen that is just 7.2 mm thick with keyboard detached and weighs 670 grams. The Surface Pro 3 – for comparison – is 9.1 mm thick and weighs 800 grams. It includes a media dock that provides additional cooling for a burst of performance. The next-generation chip is purpose-built for 2 in 1s and will hit the market later in 2014 . Called the Intel Core M, it will be the most energy-efficient Intel Core processor in the company's history with power usage cut by up to 45 percent, resulting in 60 percent less heat. The majority of designs based on this new chip are expected to be fanless, with up to 32 hours of battery life, offering both a lightning-fast tablet and razor-thin laptop. Intel is also delivering innovation and performance for the ...

Use Cortana to define words for you in Windows 10

Microsoft’s Cortana has many uses including sending emails or checking the weather. One of the best uses though is a simple look-up feature for words and their definitions. Combined with the Hey Cortana voice recognition using Cortana to tell you quickly what a word means is a great hands-free tip. There are multiple ways to get Cortana to define a word. If you have Hey Cortana enabled you can simply blurt out your request: “Hey Cortana what is the meaning/definition of inchoate ?” “Hey Cortana define ubiquitously “ You can, of course, also just type in your request e.g “ define beatitude ” although this admittedly takes some of the speed (and fun) out of using the personal digital assistant. For many words, Cortana displays the definition within a card, and OxfordDictionaries or EncartaDictionaries powers it. Sometimes, if Cortana misunderstands you or does not have the definition, the assistant opens up a web page after performing a web search for...

Visa confirms Coinbase wasn’t at fault for overcharging users

Yesterday, we wrote that Coinbase customers were being charged multiple times for past transactions. While some speculated that the erroneous withdraws were down to a Coinbase engineering issue, Coinbase issued a statement saying it wasn’t liable for the duplicate charges. The blame, instead, rested with Visa for the way it handled a migration of merchant categories for cryptocurrencies, Coinbase said. While you can read my post yesterday for an in-depth description of what happened, the basic gist is that Visa refunded and recharged (under a different merchant category) a month of old transactions. Many users saw the recharge come through before the refund processed, making it look like they were double charged. Honestly, the issue was likely exacerbated by existing payment rails — it’s normal for refunds to take multiple days to show up on credit and debit statements. But here’s where it gets weird — this morning Visa issued a statement to some publications shifting the blam...

Exciting Technology

Search This Blog