Airbnb and Jetsetter better step up their local luxury game. Today, onefinestay, the London-based home-rental company announced it would be heading stateside, flush with $12 million in financing, and ready to open up its "unhotel" model in New York City. What, exactly, is an "unhotel"? Basically, just a fancy way of saying Airbnb for the fabulous set or Jetsetter's Homes listings. The company finds high-end private abodes, takes care of the photography, marketing, and insurance, and offers amenities like linens and cleaning.

Global investment firm Canaan Partners, which has offices in New York and Silicon Valley, led the round. Existing investors Index Ventures and PROfounders also participated. Index has certainly been a busy beaver. Since revealing its new $442 million fund Sunday night, Index has already announced four deals, including New York darlings Codecademy and Shapeways. (Onefinestay cofounder and CEO Greg Marsh spent three years on Index Ventures' IT investment team.)

"Two years ago, we hardly dared dream that owners of high-end homes would be so receptive to our business model," Mr. Marsh said in the press release. Of course, in that time, Airbnb, which was founded in 2008, has popularized the concept and onefinestay, launched in London in 2010, has benefitted from consumer comfort levels with letting strangers into their homes. (HomeAway, which was founded in 2005 with more typical vacation fare, and went public last summer, currently has a market cap of $1.74 billion.)

But don't count Airbnb out of the luxe life just yet. While onefinestay has two offerings currently available at more than $1,000/night, Airbnb has more than 50 New York City listings over $1,000/night, the highest being an Upper West Side duplex one block from Central Park inexplicably priced at $9,999/night. Wait, maybe Airbnb is the Airbnb for rich people?

Finally, a Bain Capital story that doesn't involve the term "vulture capital." This morning, Blip, a video network highlighting original web series, announced a financing round of more than $12 million. Bain Capital Ventures, Canaan Partners, and other previous investors contributed $6.5 million as well as debt from Silicon Valley Bank totaling about $6 million.

The company, formerly known as Blip.tv, filed a Form D in December of last year, signifying that they had already raised $6 million from Bain and Canaan Partners.

In the press release, Blip claimed revenue had grown 100 percent year-over-year thanks to 13 million monthly uniques in the U.S. and 30 million monthly viewers globally. The new funding, said Blip, will be used to develop tools and services for web series producers, invest in its advertising and distribution platforms, and "significantly expand" syndication relationships.

Betabeat spoke with Blip COO Steve Brookstein to talk about the competition for eyeballs, whether YouTube is a friend or foe, and if he's voting for Bain founder Mitt Romney.

According to Mr. Brookstein, the search for a new Blip CEO is progressing along. "We've seen a number of very strong candidates and hope to have a selection soon," he said. (Blip CEO and co-founder Mike Hudack took a medical leave from the company last fall. Around the same time, Blip announced the depature of co-founder Dina Kaplan, who had been handling the company's PR and marketing.)

Although Bain Capital may be making headlines of late, Mr. Brookstein said he doesn't foresee "any particular rub-off effect" on the company. He pointed out that it was Bain Capital Ventures, a division of the firm that Mitt built, that backed the company. "We think the world of Bain," said Mr. Brookstein, adding, "I think [Bain's investment] has zero impact on the sideshow going on with Gov. Romney." Mr. Brookstein declined to specify whether he would consider voting for the presidential hopeful, noting, "I don’t even discuss my voting practices with my wife."

As for Blip's destination site, which the company launched in May of last year, Mr. Brookstein said it already represents 12 percent of the company's "overall monetizable views," or videos they can run ads on. The destination site features a curated collection of 2,200 of Blip's 55,000 videos. "But we also have our player distributed on many other platforms." The site is merely one way, "we can monetize throughout our entire distribution platform," he said.

The most popular series right now are Day[9], Smosh, Red vs. Blue, and Nostaliga Critic. Blip doesn't necessarily have exclusive deals with the web series it showcases, which is why Mr. Brookstein tried to position YouTube rolling out its channel initiative and original content as a good thing.  "We work closely with YouTube, in some respects a partner, it's not really we versus they," he said. Rather, he reasoned, YouTube is shinning a spotlight on a huge market with room for them both.

So Blip has no competitors, we asked? "To some degree Hulu," he admitted, or "anyone who is looking for eyeballs."

In that arena, Blip may have an unexpected leg up, at the annual 2012 Consumer Electronics Show, Blip beat out Hulu, Dailymotion, Crackle, and Joost to win "Best Distribution Platform" from the International Academy of Web Television. In other news: web TV has its own international academy! Who knew?

If you like our logo, wait till you see our living room.

Canaan Partners — a multibillion-dollar VC firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Israel and India — has opened a new office in New York.

"We've been investing in New York City since 1997 when we first backed DoubleClick. We continue to invest actively in this area, with nine new investments in the past several years," Warren Lee, venture partner at Canaan and co-director of the firm's New York office, said in a press release.

Canaan is currently invested in New York startups blip.tv and Tremor Media. Canaan was a backer of DoubleClick, the ad network which sold to Google in 2008 for $3.1 billion — New York's largest exit to date.

"We are very impressed with the quality and experience of New York entrepreneurs," continued Lee. "We are convinced that New York will become an increasingly important center for innovation in sectors such as advertising, commerce, media, retail, and financial services."

Bonus perk for Canaan startups: Their office will feature a "digital living room" with an Xbox Kinect360, powered by 3D-sensing technology from Canaan portfolio company PrimeSense, and a GoogleTV, featuring web video content from Canaan portfolio company blip.tv.