Mews Systems raised $33 million in funding today to bring its property management software to the U.S.
Headquartered in Prague and London, the company has opened an office in New York City — founder Richard Valtr is set to move there in two weeks — and plans to open another three offices in California, Texas and Florida this year. By the end of 2020, Mews plans to grow its 270-person global team by another 200 people, with all new hires based in the U.S.
Valtr said the firm is looking for sales representatives, account managers, product teams, and research and data science team members across all these locations.
“The U.S. has such an incredible talent base,” he said.
Founded in 2012, Mews provides cloud-based property management software to more than 1,000 hotels, hostels and guesthouses across the world. Valtr said he was inspired to create the company after watching his mom run a hotel in Prague.
“My mother is the entrepreneur of the family, and my dad is a software engineer — back when they were more like electrical engineers — so that’s where the worlds kind of collided,” Valtr said.
Through Mews, guests can book, check-in and pay for their stays online. Hotels can manage multiple property locations, track the number of available rooms, monitor revenue projections and more. Mews charges properties a monthly subscription fee, which ranges from €7.01 to €15.29 per room.
But recently, Valtr said he has been “enamored” with the function-as-a-service business model, which would allow hotels to use Mews simply as a plug-in for additional software and applications. Mew currently integrates with more than 200 popular accounting, marketing and booking providers through application programming interfaces (APIs).
“Essentially looking at all of our APIs and thinking, ‘How can I use this API to actually drive the things I’m trying to do?’” Valtr said. “We have a few hospitality partners that don’t use our UI at all, or in a very, very limited way. They build their own solution on top of us.”
The company projects it will double its revenue by the end of the year.
In addition to expanding into the U.S., Mews plans to use the funding to develop its financial technology offerings.
The company has applied for a European banking license that it hopes to receive by the end of the year. Once Mews gets the license, it plans to add a tool that allows hotels to transfer money and pay suppliers through its software.
The company also plans to install features that could let hotels rent out individual parking spaces, conference rooms and other amenities. For private vacation rental spots — Valtr was careful to note that Airbnb is not a current Mews customer — the company wants to add a tool that lets property owners make bookings at a more granular level — for instance by renting out multiple individual beds in a shared room, a couch in the living room, or an air mattress in the home office.
“We’re thinking in terms of space, rather than rooms and beds,” Valtr said.
Battery Ventures led today’s Series B round, bringing total investment in Mews to $41.6 million.
