Wednesday, August 17, 2011

RelayRides rounds up $10M for carsharing venture

Carsharing startup RelayRides has taken in $10 million from a second tranche of a Series A financing backed by August Capital, Google Ventures, with new investors Shasta Ventures and entrepreneur and author Lisa Gansky.

RelayRides was founded in 2008 in Cambridge but now has its headquarters in San Francisco with an additional office in Boston.  The company focuses its business on neighbor-to-neighbor carsharing, in which car owners loan their cars to others in exchange for a fee.

The funding news today follows the company’s initial Series A funding of $5.1 million in March from August Capital and Google Ventures.  RelayRides noted in a news release today that it plans to use the funding to support its expansion through San Francisco city limits and into Boston; the service currently runs in Cambridge.

Among its investors, Lisa Gansky is a “sharing economy” advocate, an entrepreneur, and author of “The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing.”

In 2010, RelayRides was a $50,000 winner of the MassChallenge startup competition – a nonprofit startup incubator competition intended to keep companies in Massachusetts.