Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen: HouseTrip

Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen, 29 and 31
Company: HouseTrip
Web: www.housetrip.com

Founded in 2010 by husband-and-wife team Arnaud Bertrand and Junjun Chen, house sharing website HouseTrip has enjoyed phenomenal success since launch, growing to become one of the largest holiday rental websites in the world. The site allows homeowners to securely list their own properties for holiday lets, (for hosts it’s free to sign up and advertise), offering holidaymakers a cheaper and more memorable alternative to expensive, generic hotel stays. With more than 320,000 properties listed on the site across 20,000 destinations (and around 3,000 new listings added each week), the platform’s rise to prominence has been more than impressive.

Some of Europe’s most well-known VCs have been anything but shy in throwing their weight behind this hugely promising tech business, and HouseTrip has been backed with an eye-watering $60m to date, from investors including Accel Partners, Index Ventures and Balderton Capital. Boasting an eye-watering turnover and recently named by The Times as one of its 50 best travel websites, Bertrand and Chen – along with their 200-strong team working in offices in Switzerland, Portugal and the UK – are undoubtedly going places.