Portland-based vacation rental company Vacasa today announced the hiring of Lisa Jurinka as its new chief legal officer in preparation for an initial public offering.
Jurinka previously helped guide companies like Epocrates and CafePress to the public market. She also served as general counsel at Jive Software and most recently at Innovari.
“Lisa’s global legal affairs background and public company experience aligns well with Vacasa and our future plans,” Vacasa CEO Eric Breon said in a statement. “We’re excited to welcome Lisa and strengthen our leadership team as we continue to pursue the tremendous opportunity ahead and scale our business across the globe.”
Vacasa, ranked No. 3 on the GeekWire 200, bills itself as the “largest U.S. vacation rental management company” and offers various services — marketing, rate optimization, reservations, guest services, housekeeping, maintenance, etc. — to help homeowners earn money off their property. It has more than 8,000 vacation homes listed on its site across 22 U.S. states, Europe, South and Central America, and South Africa.
Vacasa would be the first Portland-based company to IPO since Cascade Microtech in 2004. nLight, based in nearby Vancouver, Wash., went public in April. Seattle-based companies like Smartsheet and DocuSign had IPOs earlier this year.
Vacasa landed one of the region’s largest fundraising rounds last year, reeling in $103 million this past October from Riverwood Capital, NewSpring and previous investors Level Equity and Assurant Growth Investing.
The company is similar to platforms like Airbnb, which is valued at $31 billion, and HomeAway, which was acquired by Expedia for $3.9 billion in 2015. In addition to people working out of offices in Portland and Boise, the company employs more than 2,000 across its markets for on-the-ground “field-based roles” — housekeepers, reservations agents, local managers, etc.
Airbnb has been an IPO candidate but internal disagreements over whether to go public has delayed a debut on Wall Street.
Vacasa has been around since 2009 and bootstrapped until taking its first outside investment in 2016 with a $40 million Series A round.
