Twitter investor: Hipmunk one of "the most innovative” in travel

February 23, 2011 3:39 PM
Anthony Ha

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

I’ve been writing about how impressed I am with travel site Hipmunk for a while now, and so have other bloggers. Now it sounds like the company has fans among venture capitalists too.

George Zachary, the Charles River Ventures partner who was an early investor in Twitter, declared today that Hipmunk and his portfolio company Wanderfly are “the most innovative thing I’ve seen in travel.”

Today’s Launch conference in San Francisco was definitely a love fest for Hipmunk, which was demonstrating its iPhone app on-stage. Most of the judges (yes, the same judges who tore apart Appconomy and some of the other presenters) said that the company was their favorite presenter among the startups that demonstrated this afternoon. The idea of sorting flights by “agony” rather than price is something that resonates.

Nonetheless, 500 Startups founder Dave McClure did ask the hard question about Hipmunk’s business — couldn’t someone else just build a similar site? Danilo Campos, who’s in charge of Hipmunk’s mobile app, said that while “it’s easy to copy the results of a feature, I don’t think it’s easy to copy the intent.” At Hipmunk, unlike other travel services, Campos said the intent is “kindness.”

As for the iPhone app, it looks like an impressive transfer of Hipmunk’s features to a smaller screen. My only quibble: It was a little confusing to see the company at a conference called Launch demonstrating a product that it actually launched yesterday.

Hipmunk recently raised $4.2 million in funding in a round led by Ignition Partners.

(Article updated to add Wanderfly, whose name I didn’t catch during the conference.)

Guest

Agree with McClure, what is so innovative about Hipmunk. I've tried it and found nothing especially unique or exciting about it.
http://www.venturebeat.com Anthony Ha

Well, after I used it once it became my default flight search engine and it always pains me when I have to use something else. “Innovative” may not be the best word here, but the fact is that it makes the process much faster and less stressful for me, and many of the people I've recommended it to.
bassok

Uhm, your story says “the same judges who tore apart Appcelerator ” … yet the linked article talks about Appconomy and doesn't mention Appcelerator at all.What gives?
http://www.venturebeat.com Anthony Ha

It was typo. Fixed now.
http://alexisohanian.com/ Alexis Ohanian

Thanks, Anthony! We'll do our best to keep taking the agony out of travel search. We appreciate all the support – there's a lot of competition out there, but it's really heartening to see how well people respond to a site that really wants to please them.