Rental guest screening platform Autohost inks pre-seed funding

• The round’s investors included Mistral Venture Partners, a Canadian early-stage venture capital firm
• Eldon Sprickerhoff, founder of eSentire, and Brian O’Higgins, founder of Entrust, also participated
• Richard Reiner, founder of Assurent and president of PasswordBox, joined Autohost as an advisor

Autohost, a Toronto-based guest screening platform for short and long-term rentals, has secured pre-seed financing. No financial terms were disclosed.

The round’s investors included Mistral Venture Partners, as well as Eldon Sprickerhoff, founder of eSentire, and Brian O’Higgins, founder of Entrust.

Richard Reiner, founder of Assurent and president of PasswordBox, joined Autohost as an advisor.

Founded in 2019 by Ela Mezhiborsky, Anton Zilberberg and Roy Firestein, Autohost has developed a platform that provides identity verification, background checks and behavioral analysis for fraud, among other capabilities, for hospitality businesses. The funds raised will be used to grow the startup’s teams across sales, customer success, product and software development.

“Autohost’s deep market insights of property managers and impressive traction caught our attention,” said Raif Barbaros, a partner at Mistral Venture Partners, in a statement. “But once we spoke to some of their customers and heard how critical Autohost was to their business, we had to get involved. We are excited to support the team in their efforts to get the company to the next level.”

Based in Ottawa, Mistral Venture Partners is one of the few established seed-stage venture capital firms in Canada. It invests across enterprise software, fintech and ecommerce marketplaces.