Former Oversee Employees and Executive Starts SecondPorch.com & Get $1M In Funding

2010 March 19
by MHB

Several former Oversee employees, including its Co-founder are involved in a startup which announced they secured $1,000,000 in funding this week.

The site SecondPorch.com, offers vacation homeowners an easier way to generate and manage high-value rental inquiries.

Investors include the former CO-founder of Oversee.net, Fred Hsu and the Oregon Angel Fund.

Another former Snapnames employee, Kerry Kelly is a Co-founder of the company along with CEO Brent Hieggelke.

Blake Biesecker formerly of SnapNames is also an officer of the company.

Sudhir Bhagwan the former CEO of Snapnames.com is on the board of directors of SecondPorch.com and an investor in the company.

Ron Sheridan formerly of Oversee, is an adviser to the company.

This is how SecondPorch Describes itself:

“Second Porch tackles the unsolved piece of the marketing opportunity for vacation homeowners by bringing an easy to use system to effectively and tastefully market to the best possible source of guests: people you already know and with whom you have some degree of trust,”

“The typical Facebook personal network comprised of ‘friends of friends’ reaches almost 17,000 people, all of whom can be vouched for by a friend in common. For a homeowner, this is an obvious opportunity to find prospective guests to rent to with a higher level of comfort and peace of mind. Second Porch also complements sites like HomeAway and VRBO, by giving homeowners the controls to integrate their existing calendars and even link back to their listings on those sites.”

As someone who owns a “vacation” house that I’m considering renting this year, this sounds like a great service.  If you can access information of renters histories, steering clear of those who have had incidents of causing damage or other problems, while building up a database of good renters  its a tremendous value.  Moreover just knowing that such a service exists might prevent people from causing damage to property knowing that is they get a bad report they maybe barred from renting any other property.

Its great to see people from the domain industry stepping out continuing on to the next level.

We wish SecondPorch.com and all those involved the best of luck.

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11 Responses leave one →
  1. 2010 March 20

    Great story Michael.

    Do you think that they should have got SecondHandPorch.com as well?

    AronMeystedt.com

  2. 2010 March 20

    interesting that people from within the domain world didnt use a category killer or even a descripive string.

  3. 2010 March 20
    small domainer permalink

    I agree with Tim.
    The chances of me remembering SecondPoach is slim.
    Oh, I meant to type FirstPorch.

    See, I’m already confused.

    These pros should no better. And, they had access and ability to acquire an outstanding domain.

    Now, they will have to spend a lot of money and effort for me to remember it.

    But, I guess if they thought oversee.net was the best name to lauch a company, they might know something I don’t know.

  4. 2010 March 20
    stewart permalink

    all the usual suspects I suppose from the snap names scandal yet to be deposed by the fed in a rico indictment? is that who they all are?

  5. 2010 March 20
    MHB permalink

    Stewart

    I think you should not throw these kind of accusations around when not one shred of evidence has yet to come to light that involves any other employee or Oversee or Snapnames other than Brady.

    Moreover there is no indication that any agency is investigating anyone related to this.

  6. 2010 March 20
    Aggro permalink

    What – no Halvarez on board the new co ?

    @ Tim Davids

    It’s a decent name.

    Most services (like this one) do not have a short catchy name (1 or 2 worder) that is not too unnecessarily restrictive.
    Most domainers would’ve chosen and ended up with some clumsy stupid 3 or 4 worder.

    That’s the difference between entreprenures who actually do it, and domainers sitting at home who are still busy trying to acquire just *the* right domain name to start their “earth shattering company” (NOT)…

  7. 2010 March 20
    Aggro permalink

    @ small domainer

    There are always some who will forget the name, no matter what…even if its a 1 worder.

    You probably have difficulty finding your way home every day…

  8. 2010 March 20
    Aggro permalink

    Meant to include:

    Category killer names are either developed (eg VacationRentals.com, VacationHomes.com & others similar) and would likely be prohibitively expensive to acquire relative to the round of funding.

  9. 2010 March 20
    MHB permalink

    Aggro

    I agree $1m in funding isn’t going to even get that level of domain and the site was already up and running and the business operating prior to the funding.

  10. 2010 March 20
    small domainer permalink

    “Most domainers would’ve chosen and ended up with some clumsy stupid 3 or 4 worder.

    That’s the difference between entreprenures who actually do it, and domainers sitting at home who are still busy trying to acquire just *the* right domain name to start their “earth shattering company” (NOT)… ”

    Aggro, you must be right.
    I would have responded earlier but I got lost coming home tonight.

    I was daydreaming about my next great domain creation using a domain spinner.

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