Seed Round · €400K · Europe · 2026
The AI ops layer for Europe's independent hospitality market.
400,000+ hostels, colivings, and independent properties across Europe still run on WhatsApp and rotating volunteers. No purpose-built system exists for them. Hostack is it.
We have one live deployment, four quantified results, and a pipeline of properties that can't move fast enough. We're raising €400K to build the engineering team and expand across Eastern Europe.
- Stage
- Seed
- Size
- €400K
- Focus region
- Eastern Europe
- Structure
- SAFE / Convertible Note
The Investment Case
One paragraph. The whole story.
The most valuable thing that happens at a hostel or coliving is never operational. It's the solo traveler who meets a future co-founder over breakfast. The volunteer who organizes a bonfire because they had a free afternoon. The owner who recommends a trail no guidebook lists. These moments don't happen when people are buried in logistics — they happen when logistics are invisible. Hostack makes logistics invisible. It's not a tool to replace human interaction. It's a platform to protect it: AI handles every repetitive, answerable, predictable question and task so that the humans in the building are fully present for what only humans can do. We built it inside a real property — Torridonia, Scottish Highlands — before we pitched it to anyone. The market is 400,000 properties wide and completely unserved. And no one else is building for this segment.
The Problem
400,000 properties. Zero purpose-built ops layer.
Independent hostels and colivings represent Europe's most fragmented hospitality segment — and its most underserved. They share a structural problem that no existing tool solves.
- €12B+
estimated annual cost of operational inefficiency
The manager is the operating system.
Every question, every handover, every gap in the shift — it lands in one person's phone. 3–5 hours of manager time disappears every day not to strategy or growth, but to coordination that should be automated.
- 2–3 days
average onboarding time per new volunteer (industry average)
Volunteer churn resets the operation monthly.
Workaway, Worldpackers, and seasonal staff rotate every 2–8 weeks. Nothing is documented. Every new arrival starts from zero. The manager re-explains the same routines in an endless loop.
- 0%
of independent properties use purpose-built ops software
Hotel PMS tools weren't built for this.
Cloudbeds, Mews, Little Hotelier — built for hotel chains, priced for hotel chains. They assume a permanent, trained staff. They assume the manager isn't also doing check-ins, cleaning, and guest relations. They don't solve volunteer-operated properties.
Our Philosophy
AI doesn't replace human interaction. It protects it.
Every hostel and coliving has a hidden resource that no tool has ever tried to protect: the time and attention of the humans inside it. When a volunteer spends the morning answering 'where's the mop?' and 'when does the next group check in?' — that's time not spent organizing a hike, starting a conversation, or building the kind of community that generates five-star reviews. When a guest check-in is a transaction — forms, key handover, basic questions — that's a moment of arrival that should feel like belonging, reduced to friction. Hostack routes the transactional to AI and returns the relational to people. The check-in becomes a welcome. The volunteer briefing becomes a creative conversation. The manager's morning becomes strategic instead of reactive. The measure of Hostack's success is not operational efficiency. It's the number of genuinely human moments that happen inside a property every day.
Guest check-in
Before
Staff tied up with forms, key handover, and the same ten questions every arrival. No time to do anything but process.
With Hostack
Check-in is automated. Staff are free to actually welcome the guest — introduce them to other travelers, share a local recommendation, make them feel like they arrived somewhere meaningful, not just somewhere booked.
Volunteer onboarding
Before
Manager spends 2–3 days hand-holding each new arrival through routines, rules, and repetitive questions. Same loop, every rotation.
With Hostack
Volunteer scans the QR, learns the system independently, and by day two is proposing a community dinner instead of asking where the cleaning supplies are.
Daily operations
Before
Staff WhatsApp flooded with guest questions about towels, WiFi, checkout time, and where to find things. Every predictable question is a human interruption.
With Hostack
AI answers the predictable. Humans handle the unexpected — and the things worth handling: the guest who needs a recommendation, the traveler who looks lost, the moment that makes a stay memorable.
Traction
One live. Real numbers.
Torridonia — a creative hub for travelers in the Scottish Highlands, running 12 rotating volunteers — deployed Hostack in early 2026. These are the results after 90 days.
Before
Manager online every morning. Everything runs through one person.
After Hostack
Team runs the shift. Manager checks one dashboard.
"The dashboard is the first thing I check every morning. It tells me exactly what happened overnight and what needs my attention today. I don't need to ask anyone anything."
The Platform
Every repetitive task goes to AI. Every human moment stays with humans.
Hostack is a connected system across four surfaces — staff app, manager dashboard, volunteer onboarding, and guest interaction — designed around a single principle: AI handles the transactional so humans can focus on the relational.
Staff App
Shift context, daily briefs, task list — in the volunteer's pocket from day one. Briefings pushed automatically at shift start. No WhatsApp required.
Manager Dashboard
One view of overnight activity, current shift status, open incidents, and team adoption. Replace 3 hours of morning coordination with a 5-minute dashboard check.
Volunteer Onboarding QR
New arrival scans a QR code on check-in. SOPs, shift context, house rules — all there. No one-on-one walkthrough. No documentation to chase.
Guest Request Routing
Guest submits a request — it becomes a tracked task assigned to the on-shift team. Not a WhatsApp message. Not a sticky note. A task with an owner and a close date.
AI Automations
Daily briefing generation, incident classification, shift handover summaries — generated by AI and pushed automatically. The manager approves or overrides; they don't write.
Incident Reporting
Staff logs an issue from the app. It escalates by severity. The manager is notified only if it needs them. Everything else is handled in the system.
Built to free people, not replace them.
Most hospitality tech is built to reduce headcount. Hostack is built to give people their time back — so the volunteer who would have spent the afternoon answering the same question for the fourth time can instead organize something worth remembering. The manager who would have spent the morning on WhatsApp can spend it thinking about the property's next chapter. The guest who would have waited at the desk for 20 minutes can walk in, scan, and be welcomed by a human who was expecting them.
Market
A €4B+ addressable market with no dominant player.
€4.2B
400,000+ independent hostels, colivings, rural B&Bs, and boutique guesthouses across Europe that lack an integrated ops system. At entry-level pricing of €99/mo: €475M ARR potential.
€600M
~50,000 properties that operate with rotating volunteers or seasonal staff — Hostack's core segment. The manager-bottleneck problem is structural for all of them.
€3M
2,500 properties in Eastern Europe, UK, Spain, and Portugal — our initial geographic focus. Achievable with 3 full-time salespeople and the Co-Build beachhead.
- →Volunteer tourism is growing 30%+ post-COVID — more properties running on rotating staff, all facing the same operational chaos.
- →Travelers increasingly choose independent hospitality for the human connection it promises — and review harshly when operations get in the way of it.
- →AI automation tools have reduced the cost to build our core automations by 10×, making this the right moment to build.
- →No funded competitor targets volunteer-operated independent properties. The segment is real, large, and ignored.
Business Model
Implementation fee + recurring SaaS. High LTV, low churn.
Two revenue streams: a one-time implementation fee for Co-Build partners (discovery call to close), and a monthly SaaS subscription that compounds as properties never want to go back to WhatsApp.
Co-Build Program (now)
Full implementation: ops audit, SOP writing, Hostack configuration, team training, QR onboarding, 30-day support. 4–6 weeks on-site or remote.
SaaS Self-Serve (Q3 2027)
Self-serve onboarding. White-labeled subdomain. Three tiers: Starter (5–20 beds), Growth (20–50 beds), Scale (50+ beds or multi-property).
Competition
No one is building for volunteer-operated properties.
The hospitality software market is large and growing — but existing tools target the wrong customer. Hotels, not hostels. Permanent staff, not rotating volunteers.
| Feature | WhatsApp + spreadsheets | Cloudbeds / Mews / Little Hotelier | Hostack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volunteer onboarding | 2–3 days, manager-led | Not supported | < 1 hr, self-serve QR |
| Daily briefing automation | Manual, every morning | Not supported | AI-generated, auto-pushed |
| Guest request routing | Lost in group chat | Requires PMS training | Automatic task assignment |
| Manager time required | 3–5 hrs/day | 2–4 hrs/day | 15–30 min/day |
| Pricing (small hostel) | €0 (hidden cost is manager time) | €200–500/mo | €99–299/mo |
| Built for rotating volunteers | Partially | No | Yes — core use case |
Team
Built by an operator. Funded to scale with engineers.
Jorge Ibáñez
Founder & CEO
5 years managing hostels and colivings across Europe. Currently managing Torridonia in the Scottish Highlands — where Hostack was built, deployed, and validated. Deep understanding of the operational chaos Hostack solves, because he lived it.
- →5 years hostel/coliving operations across 4 countries
- →Built Hostack as the tool he needed — no outside spec
- →Managing Torridonia: 12 volunteers, live Hostack deployment since 2026
- →Direct relationship with the Co-Build pipeline (12+ properties)
Seed funding builds the engineering team.
CTO / Lead Engineer
Full-stack, AI/LLM integration experience. Leads product architecture and the SaaS transition.
Senior Full-Stack Engineer × 2
Shipping feature velocity across the Staff App, Manager Dashboard, and Volunteer Onboarding flows.
The Ask
€400K to build the team and own the Eastern European market.
This round closes the gap between a working product and a scalable business. It funds the engineering team to ship SaaS, and the sales motion to reach 25 paying customers in 12 months.
Use of funds
- Engineering€240K · 60%
CTO + 2 senior engineers, 12-month runway
- Sales & Business Development€80K · 20%
Co-Build pipeline conversion, CEE market entry
- Operations & Infrastructure€80K · 20%
Hosting, tooling, legal, founder salary
Milestones
- 01
Month 6
3 Co-Build properties live · Engineering team hired · SaaS alpha in beta
- 02
Month 12
25 paying properties · SaaS launched · €29,700 ARR
- 03
Month 18
100 properties · CEE expansion underway · Series A ready
Why Eastern Europe
The highest density of the right customer, in a market no one is targeting.
Eastern Europe — Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, the Baltics, and the Balkans — has seen a surge in independent hostels and colivings since 2019. The region has Europe's fastest-growing volunteer tourism sector, a strong pool of engineering talent, and hospitality operators who are early adopters of digital tools but have been overlooked by Western SaaS companies. CAC is lower. Competition is thinner. And the Hostack model — ops-first, volunteer-ready — fits the regional property profile better than anywhere else in Europe.
Who we're talking to
We're actively seeking investors who understand the CEE market, the hospitality vertical, or both — and who back operator-founders building in underserved segments.
- →Credo Ventures (Prague)
- →Presto Ventures (Prague)
- →Flashpoint (Warsaw/SF)
- →Day One Capital (Warsaw)
- →Baltic Sandbox Ventures (Vilnius)
- →bValue (Warsaw)
- →Angel networks in Prague, Warsaw, and Tallinn
Let's Talk
30 minutes. No deck required.
If you invest in early-stage SaaS, have any exposure to the hospitality or travel space, or are based in or focused on Eastern Europe — we'd like to talk. Book a call directly or request the full pitch deck.
Jorge Ibáñez · jorge@hostack.co