Breather raises $6M to roll out its network of private rooms in new cities

Breather‘s app lets you reserve a private room so you can get away for a few hours. Today the company announced a $6 million round led by RRE to bring “peace and quiet, on demand” to new cities, including San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago.

Available today in New York, Montreal, and as of this week, San Francisco, Breather’s founder and lead investor both used the term “weird” when describing the company. “I think it’s kind of a weird funny innovation that we happened to come on to,” Breather chief Julien Smith told VentureBeat. “You make a space available, and you make it rentable, and you put an electronic lock on the door, and people just show up.”

But Smith says so far the experiment’s been “radically successful.” Breather’s private spaces have apparently captured the interest of professionals, artists, students, and actors. The rooms, available for rent by the hour, are designed for productivity. According to RRE’s Steve Schlafman:

When I was in the space, a lot of my initial concerns were dissolved. It’s not like a space where college kids are gonna go to party. It feels very much like a professional hotel room without the beds.

If you ask about any “questionable activities” which might happen in these rooms, the company will tell you to get your mind of out of the gutter. “This isn’t that kind of place,” reads the company’s site.