Staying at a short-term rental in Berlin for the European Venture Market

At the beginning of last week the HouseTrip team went to Berlin to participate to the European Venture Market (looking for investors for our second-round).

Of course, for our lodging we stayed in a short-term rental and we could once again verify for ourselves that the value we get is just much better than hotels. For a price the third of a normal hotel room, we got a wonderful 150sqm loft in a Berlin historical building, with 3 bedrooms and all the amenities one could expect in a great home!

The living room of our Berlin rental

A funny anecodte is that we – obviously – started to speak about HouseTrip with our host and, after hearing us describe the project, he told us that about a month ago he had been interviewed by people wanting to launch a similar project from Switzerland… After a moment of reflection – telling ourselves that there musn’t be that many Swiss entrepreneurs in our industry – we simply noticed that it was us who interviewed him!

The loft was also very practical in that we managed to conduct a nine-person meeting with our designers and developers working from Germany, as you can see in the picture below.

Stephan is discussing HouseTrip's features to our great team of developers

The meeting was actually very nice because it was the first time the Lausanne team met with the German team! Until now, we had only been communicating through numerous virtual means but never face to face (well, Stephan had efficiently acted as a «bridge» between both teams ).

As for the European Venture Market, it was a rather fascinating event where we met with great investors and fellow entrepreneurs. For instance, an entrepreneur who really touched us is Zvi Schreiber, the founder of G.ho.st, the only technology company with a mixed Israeli and Palestinian team. You can see an article about him there where the wonderful picture below is included (from it, one could think that Zvi meets with his Palestinian colleagues in the middle of the desert when in fact they meet at a nearby gas station… but it was for sure more photogenic )

Zvi Schreiber meeting with his own developers / 2 worlds, two meetings styles

The conference ended very well with a boat party on the river in Berlin right next to the famous swimming pool embedded in the river of which I took a picture (below).

Swimming pool in the Spree river in Berlin