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?

(Photo: www.successstories.co.in/)

Some may tsk-tsk the "learn to code" meme, but that hasn't deterred New York-based Codecademy from sticking to its vision of teaching all of us to code. Today, cofounder Zach Sims announced on the company blog that the startup has raised $10M in series B funding from VC firms Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures and Union Square Ventures, as well as angel investors Yuri Milner and Richard Branson.

Folding London-based Index Ventures into its investor portfolio has a lot to do with Codecademy's future plans. Mr. Sims said that Codecademy is a "global movement," and that the company is looking towards international expansion, having already hired people from countries like Jordan and Finland. "We want anyone, anywhere to have access to an education that can change their lives," wrote Mr. Sims.

Ms. Fisher, in her native Shapeways habitat.

Shapeways, the Dutch 3D printing startup that moved out to New York after a $5.1 million investment from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures, has been on a steady crusade to introduce the future-facing practice of 3D-printing to the mainstream.

After a year in New York, the Esty of 3D printing, which makes it easy for people to create and sell their own designs on its open source 3D printers, got that hockey stick growth on its way to becoming the factory behind a growing maker community. (MakerBot is also a fan.)

Today, the company announced its first U.S. distribution center, a 5,000 sq. ft. facility in Long Island City in Queens with a nearby factory in the range of 15,000 sq. ft. to follow. Betabeat talked to Kegan Fisher, Shapeways's director of industrial engineering, about the particular challenges of building out production and shipping for a company that processes hundreds of thousands of completely unique items on demand.

(We have it on good authority from one of her coworkers that in addition to being a "serious rockstar" in the office, Ms. Fisher also "wears the coolest heels" in New York.)

Until now, Ms. Fisher explained, Shapeways based its shipping and production in Eindhoven in the Netherlands and New York as the base for its developer and product team. Having a distribution center in New York, lead time and allows for faster deliveries. "We don't have to route through customs/another continent," Ms. Fisher said via Skype. "Also way more environmentally-friendly in that respect because we aren't shipping all over." Once it's up-and-running, the distribution center will be processing a few hundred orders a day and growing.

"But more importantly," noted Ms. Fisher, "It's the first step towards opening up production that will be slated for some time in Q2 and will be in Long Island City as well." When dealing with on-demand manufacturing, she added, "One of the things that makes it so special is the locality and immedicay of it. It's what really differentiates it from other production methods."

Ms. Fisher doesn't have a machine count yet for the production facility yet, but offered some details about materials. "We'll be bringing in SLS - white strong and flexible, FUD, and ZCORP," she said. "FUD is a highly detailed plastic material and ZCORP is full color sandstone - lately its been getting a ton of buzz attached to the Minecraft figures. FUD and ZCORP will come first, and then the SLS which is our highest-volume material."

As director of industrial engineering, Ms. Fisher's role at the company has been project-focused, she said. "Basically setting up operations in the U.S., designing the factory of the future, pulling together the appropriate team and making sure if all happens yesterday." Going forward, however, "I'll move more towards new technologies, automation, etc."

The challenge is unique. "There's not too many companies that process hundreds of thousands of completely unique items and we're really defining how you do that," said Ms. Fisher. "There’s a lot of trial and error, designing new systems. Tons of white-boarding obviously. All of our order processing and production technology is designed and developed in house. Some of which I had my hands in last fall. It's pretty amazing to sit down and say, 'Hey, we have this unique problem, in which there is no existing distribution production model to look to--let's design a solution.'"

Meta!

If adulation for Brooklyn's own Bre Pettis from sources like Time magazine and Stephen Colbert is any indication, 3D printing has found its way into the cultural ether. Who doesn't like the idea of a machine that spits out a product based on your digital specifications? It's even saving the poor homeless hermit crabs, didja hear?

Well, the personalized manufacturing revolution is not lost on VCs.

Shapeways, the company Betabeat called a contender for the next Etsy, just raised an impressive $5.1 million from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures—the same VC firms that invested $5 million in Shapeways's series A round last September. Unlike Maker Bot, which creates open source 3D printers, Shapeways focuses on printing out your designs and setting up (an Etsy-like) marketplace for designers to sell their goods.

In addition to the $5.1 million, the startup, which is headquartered near Madison Park, also got a loan commitment of $1.2 million from NYC Investment Fund.

But the really big news, at least for New York City, is that the company plans on opening up local printing facilities, reports TechCrunch.

Currently, Shapeways production office is located in the Netherlands (the Dutch startup moved to New York after an investment from USV). Heretofore, the company printed orders over there or through third-parties contractors. With a local facility, turnaround will be faster and prices lower. "The company hasn’t specified exactly what kind of savings to expect just yet, but I’m told they will be substantial," says TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid.

Okay, so who wants an iPhone 4 case in the shape of a boom box? We're thinking of actually giving people presents this year. If they're nice.