A New Era for Couchsurfing

We started CouchSurfing with a crazy idea in mind. We thought that maybe, just maybe, the world could be changed one couch at a time. 5,766,182 inspiring experiences later, we couldn’t be more sure of it.

What you’ve done as a community has inspired us to take our mission and our vision to a whole new level. We want to understand what inspiring experiences are made of, so we can enable you to have more of them. We want to make CouchSurfing easier to use so that anyone who’s interested in changing the world one couch at a time will feel welcome here.

To accomplish this, we’re making a radical change in structure. As of today, CouchSurfing is proud to announce that we are joining the growing ranks of certified B Corporations.

What is a B Corporation?

As a B (Benefit) Corporation, CouchSurfing will be part of a group of innovative businesses that deliver products and services with a commitment to social and environmental responsibility, transparency, fair work conditions, and doing good for the world.

Bcorp Video
Video Info Center: CS and B Corp

What changes?

Expect to see lots of improvements to the website! Becoming a B Corporation allows us to get funding from investors who believe in what we do and want to see us achieve our vision. We’ve already received backing from Omidyar, the philanthropic investment firm behind Wikimedia and Kiva.org, and from Benchmark Capital, a respected firm with investments in social websites like Quora and Twitter. Their support will allow us to give you more of the features you’ve been asking for. When you look at the amazing way that this community has grown with a relatively basic set of tools, it’s really exciting to imagine what it will be like when you’ve got even better systems available to you.

What stays the same?

First of all, our mission and vision won’t change. Becoming a B Corporation makes us accountable to our core values. And you can check out the full audit that B Lab, the non-profit that issues B Corp certifications, recently completed of our social responsibility. We’re proud to say we scored a 106.8 — well over the 80 necessary to earn our certification, and above average for a company of our size.

Secondly, CouchSurfing will never make you pay to host and surf. It’s against our vision to exclude anyone from having inspiring experiences for financial reasons, and that’s not going to change just because our methods of generating revenue do.

Thank you, CouchSurfers!

Your participation in this project of ours has taken us from an idea to a community where people have life-changing experiences every day. CouchSurfing is always evolving. This is a whole new CouchSurfing era of amazing possibilities and a larger-than-ever chance of really making a difference in the world. We’re so glad to have you along for this new stage in our adventure together.

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