6 ms·

Hipmunk Surfacing New $6 Million Round

50 points by jazzychad 16y ago

joshu 16y ago
I am sad I passed on investing in this one.
pg 16y ago
That is a brilliant image. Who made that?
- spez 16y ago
  Alexis got someone to make it for us.
- savrajsingh 16y ago
  Can someone explain the image? So it's the hipmunk chipmunk stalking somebody in a kayak... Surface great airfare... EDIT: Wait, I get it. Setting sights on kayak.com. :)
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - seiji 16y ago
    Parody of http://www.google.com/images?q=shark+kayak http://www.google.com/images?q=shark+kayak
pmchiu 16y ago
Congrats to the folks at Hipmunk. I've always really liked the simplicity of this idea for travel search. I do wonder, however, how long they'll be able to continue to link directly to the airlines. I'm assuming (and this may be an overly broad generalization) that as they build out features for users this will naturally force them to create interstitial's between the carrier's website and their own. I seem to recall that Kayak was very similar in terms of its relationship with carriers when they initially started. But as they built out more functionality they created more for the user to do on their site distracting them away from the carrier site. So although TechCrunch thinks it interesting that American isn't cutting out Hipmunk is this really going to be true in the long run?
- kin 16y ago
  I think so, for financial reasons. AA cut themselves out to cut costs. Orbitz and other similar services were (from what I heard) overcharging AA for referral costs. Naturally, I think Hipmunk and AA simply have a deal that won't really hurt AA.
vijayr 16y ago
If you choose the return date earlier than the departure date, the error message you get "we don't support trips to the past yet" humor is always nice :)
catch23 16y ago
I used their service 2 weeks ago... a breeze to find the least agonizing trip. I'd pay $50 more if the schedule was more pleasing to me.
markessien 16y ago
This is just my subjective opinion, but that seems a bit overvalued to me. I have no doubt that hipmunk will be successful, but after raising that amount, the amount of success they must see is going to have to be pretty large. If they had not raised that amount, a 10 mill exit would be great. But if you raise 7 and exit for 10, it doesn't look very impressive. I hope they gain the technological or businesses assets to make them worth tens of millions, it seems like that is what would guarantee such a large raise.
- spez 16y ago
  Well, we have zero interest in selling for $10 million.
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    Nor should you. I was meaning to ask, though, when are your prices going to match everyone else's? I did some travelling around New Years, and found your prices were $580 whereas your competitor's (forget who) was $510. That pissed me off, as I really wanted to book through you guys. Your site is fantastic, but at the end of the day money talks.
    - natrius 16y ago
      Some vendors don't include taxes and fees in their listed prices. Hipmunk does. That could be the discrepancy.
      - redthrowaway 16y ago
        Nah, it wasn't. I remember them saying something about doing search through another agency so as to have access to all flights, but the flight in question wasn't even listed on hipmunk. It seems to be better now. Now I just have to convince people to use it. Speaking of which, if they can figure out how to let people buy on points that'd be fantastic. Not sure if the airlines have made that API available, but it would be great.
    - 16y ago
timc 16y ago
congrats guys. love the hipmunk user experience.
HackrNwsDesignr 16y ago
I can see hipmunk fetching way more than 10 million, if they decide to sell. It addresses a huge paint point in sites people have little brand loyalty because people hop around for deals to airlines they _do_ have brand loyalty for anyways. Hipmunk is 10x easier to use with all the same deals on those sites, and they are creating brand loyalty with a cute chipmunk. #win
shashashasha 16y ago
I love Hipmunk and have used it to buy tickets to as far away as India and Tokyo to as close as LAX. Buying international flights is usually an incredibly stressful process for me as there are so many different options, and in my past few flights to Shanghai booking on Kayak has always ended up sending me to chase flights that don't exist anymore. Hipmunk removes that stress for me -- seriously awesome.
rmason 16y ago
Initially I loved HipMunk but I came to find out the agenda they use in hiding flights does not mirror my preferences. One recent example I was travelling from Detroit to LAX with my 94 year old father and I wanted a direct flight. HipMunk showed nothing but Delta.com showed four daily flights. Sure they were more expensive but I gladly paid the premium because my dad is too old to be running between gates. No amount of sorting showed those flights on HipMunk. Maybe if they have the money they can build a preference layer.
- lurchpop 16y ago
  they don't have enough partner airlines. frankly i still find sidestep.com to be a better interface with more granular controls over what you're looking for. I also don't get their business model. Last time i checked plane ticket affiliate payouts are abysmally low; south of $10 per ticket.
- spez 16y ago
  That may have been a fluke. Delta wasn't listed on Hipmunk for a day or so.
johnrob 16y ago
Given the hype growing around Hipmunk, I'm surprised that none of the current players (i.e. kayak) have responded. Hipmunk's main innovation is the UI - if you were Kayak, and you already had a backend in place, wouldn't you assign at least one designer/developer to play around with novel UIs? Maybe launch a site on a different domain that can act as an R&D and marketing testbed for a new type of search engine? It astounds me how lazy these companies appear to be (from the outside of course). A new hot startup launches, and they don't even lift a finger as a counter measure. Even when the upstart has proven that there is more to be desired out of a typical airline search site.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  "A new hot startup launches, and they don't even lift a finger as a counter measure." Probably because they don't think it's an improvement and they think it will go out of business on its own if they ignore it. This is what happens to most 'hot' startups anyway, and if Hipmunk is able to beat the odds then I doubt it will be because of their current UI.That's not to knock Hipmunk at all, I just think you need to lengthen your arc a little on this.
- cemregr 16y ago
  Didn't hipmunk file some silly patents regarding their UI "just in case"?
- bkrausz 16y ago
  if you were Kayak, and you already had a backend in place, wouldn't you assign at least one designer/developer to play around with novel UIs? What's to say the current players haven't already tried those UI changes and found them less usable by the general population? I don't know for sure, but I do know that calling the current competitors lazy is the completely wrong view (and factually incorrect). First, they deal with an older, less "techie" audience, which means different UIs are immediately viewed as confusing rather than cool. Second, they have the traffic to run A/B tests on everything, which allows them to know what such changes will do to their bottom line without having to publicly deploy or announce them. Full disclosure: I worked on TripAdvisor Flights and was in the same YC batch as Hipmunk, though there was no overlap between the two and I actively avoided mixing the two circles, so I don't actually know anything about how Hipmunk views TA and vice-versa.
Lewisham 16y ago
This question comes from incompetence, not malice, but why $6m? It seems like a lot of money for what I thought was a fairly small operation. Does $6m just not go that far, or is it supposed to last for a long time?
- spez 16y ago
  The cost of just existing in this space is very high, let alone competing in it. We're a small operation now, but we've got a long way to go, and it won't be this way for long.
joshbaptiste 16y ago
Indeed, airline availability is not an easy business to get into and is expensive to maintain. Most of our nodes are dedicated to pricing and low fare search.
jeremydavid 16y ago
I just booked a flight on Hipmunk today. Brilliant work guys :) You have succeeded in your effort to make finding an agony-free flight easy.
hugh3 16y ago
Hipmunk has a great interface, though I'm afraid I don't always trust it to find the cheapest flights just yet. Frinstance I asked it for a flight from Sydney to Melbourne on Feb 10, and the cheapest hipmunk could get me was a Virgin Blue flight for $241 -- rather expensive for this route. Checking directly on the Virgin Blue site I found fares as low as $81 on exactly the same flight. I've never had similar problems with flights with at least one end in the US though.

50 points by jazzychad 16y ago

joshu 16y ago

I am sad I passed on investing in this one.

pg 16y ago

That is a brilliant image. Who made that?

spez 16y ago
Alexis got someone to make it for us.
savrajsingh 16y ago
Can someone explain the image? So it's the hipmunk chipmunk stalking somebody in a kayak... Surface great airfare... EDIT: Wait, I get it. Setting sights on kayak.com. :)
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- seiji 16y ago
  Parody of http://www.google.com/images?q=shark+kayak http://www.google.com/images?q=shark+kayak

pmchiu 16y ago

Congrats to the folks at Hipmunk. I've always really liked the simplicity of this idea for travel search. I do wonder, however, how long they'll be able to continue to link directly to the airlines. I'm assuming (and this may be an overly broad generalization) that as they build out features for users this will naturally force them to create interstitial's between the carrier's website and their own. I seem to recall that Kayak was very similar in terms of its relationship with carriers when they initially started. But as they built out more functionality they created more for the user to do on their site distracting them away from the carrier site. So although TechCrunch thinks it interesting that American isn't cutting out Hipmunk is this really going to be true in the long run?

kin 16y ago
I think so, for financial reasons. AA cut themselves out to cut costs. Orbitz and other similar services were (from what I heard) overcharging AA for referral costs. Naturally, I think Hipmunk and AA simply have a deal that won't really hurt AA.

vijayr 16y ago

If you choose the return date earlier than the departure date, the error message you get "we don't support trips to the past yet" humor is always nice :)

catch23 16y ago

I used their service 2 weeks ago... a breeze to find the least agonizing trip. I'd pay $50 more if the schedule was more pleasing to me.

markessien 16y ago

This is just my subjective opinion, but that seems a bit overvalued to me. I have no doubt that hipmunk will be successful, but after raising that amount, the amount of success they must see is going to have to be pretty large. If they had not raised that amount, a 10 mill exit would be great. But if you raise 7 and exit for 10, it doesn't look very impressive. I hope they gain the technological or businesses assets to make them worth tens of millions, it seems like that is what would guarantee such a large raise.

spez 16y ago
Well, we have zero interest in selling for $10 million.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Nor should you. I was meaning to ask, though, when are your prices going to match everyone else's? I did some travelling around New Years, and found your prices were $580 whereas your competitor's (forget who) was $510. That pissed me off, as I really wanted to book through you guys. Your site is fantastic, but at the end of the day money talks.
  - natrius 16y ago
    Some vendors don't include taxes and fees in their listed prices. Hipmunk does. That could be the discrepancy.
    - redthrowaway 16y ago
      Nah, it wasn't. I remember them saying something about doing search through another agency so as to have access to all flights, but the flight in question wasn't even listed on hipmunk. It seems to be better now. Now I just have to convince people to use it. Speaking of which, if they can figure out how to let people buy on points that'd be fantastic. Not sure if the airlines have made that API available, but it would be great.
  - 16y ago

timc 16y ago

congrats guys. love the hipmunk user experience.

HackrNwsDesignr 16y ago

I can see hipmunk fetching way more than 10 million, if they decide to sell. It addresses a huge paint point in sites people have little brand loyalty because people hop around for deals to airlines they _do_ have brand loyalty for anyways. Hipmunk is 10x easier to use with all the same deals on those sites, and they are creating brand loyalty with a cute chipmunk. #win

shashashasha 16y ago

I love Hipmunk and have used it to buy tickets to as far away as India and Tokyo to as close as LAX. Buying international flights is usually an incredibly stressful process for me as there are so many different options, and in my past few flights to Shanghai booking on Kayak has always ended up sending me to chase flights that don't exist anymore. Hipmunk removes that stress for me -- seriously awesome.

rmason 16y ago

Initially I loved HipMunk but I came to find out the agenda they use in hiding flights does not mirror my preferences. One recent example I was travelling from Detroit to LAX with my 94 year old father and I wanted a direct flight. HipMunk showed nothing but Delta.com showed four daily flights. Sure they were more expensive but I gladly paid the premium because my dad is too old to be running between gates. No amount of sorting showed those flights on HipMunk. Maybe if they have the money they can build a preference layer.

lurchpop 16y ago
they don't have enough partner airlines. frankly i still find sidestep.com to be a better interface with more granular controls over what you're looking for. I also don't get their business model. Last time i checked plane ticket affiliate payouts are abysmally low; south of $10 per ticket.
spez 16y ago
That may have been a fluke. Delta wasn't listed on Hipmunk for a day or so.

johnrob 16y ago

Given the hype growing around Hipmunk, I'm surprised that none of the current players (i.e. kayak) have responded. Hipmunk's main innovation is the UI - if you were Kayak, and you already had a backend in place, wouldn't you assign at least one designer/developer to play around with novel UIs? Maybe launch a site on a different domain that can act as an R&D and marketing testbed for a new type of search engine? It astounds me how lazy these companies appear to be (from the outside of course). A new hot startup launches, and they don't even lift a finger as a counter measure. Even when the upstart has proven that there is more to be desired out of a typical airline search site.

Alex3917 16y ago
"A new hot startup launches, and they don't even lift a finger as a counter measure." Probably because they don't think it's an improvement and they think it will go out of business on its own if they ignore it. This is what happens to most 'hot' startups anyway, and if Hipmunk is able to beat the odds then I doubt it will be because of their current UI.That's not to knock Hipmunk at all, I just think you need to lengthen your arc a little on this.
cemregr 16y ago
Didn't hipmunk file some silly patents regarding their UI "just in case"?
bkrausz 16y ago
if you were Kayak, and you already had a backend in place, wouldn't you assign at least one designer/developer to play around with novel UIs? What's to say the current players haven't already tried those UI changes and found them less usable by the general population? I don't know for sure, but I do know that calling the current competitors lazy is the completely wrong view (and factually incorrect). First, they deal with an older, less "techie" audience, which means different UIs are immediately viewed as confusing rather than cool. Second, they have the traffic to run A/B tests on everything, which allows them to know what such changes will do to their bottom line without having to publicly deploy or announce them. Full disclosure: I worked on TripAdvisor Flights and was in the same YC batch as Hipmunk, though there was no overlap between the two and I actively avoided mixing the two circles, so I don't actually know anything about how Hipmunk views TA and vice-versa.

Lewisham 16y ago

This question comes from incompetence, not malice, but why $6m? It seems like a lot of money for what I thought was a fairly small operation. Does $6m just not go that far, or is it supposed to last for a long time?

spez 16y ago
The cost of just existing in this space is very high, let alone competing in it. We're a small operation now, but we've got a long way to go, and it won't be this way for long.

joshbaptiste 16y ago

Indeed, airline availability is not an easy business to get into and is expensive to maintain. Most of our nodes are dedicated to pricing and low fare search.

jeremydavid 16y ago

I just booked a flight on Hipmunk today. Brilliant work guys :) You have succeeded in your effort to make finding an agony-free flight easy.

hugh3 16y ago

Hipmunk has a great interface, though I'm afraid I don't always trust it to find the cheapest flights just yet. Frinstance I asked it for a flight from Sydney to Melbourne on Feb 10, and the cheapest hipmunk could get me was a Virgin Blue flight for $241 -- rather expensive for this route. Checking directly on the Virgin Blue site I found fares as low as $81 on exactly the same flight. I've never had similar problems with flights with at least one end in the US though.