Reddit co-founder Steve Huffman has teamed with Adam Goldstein to create new travel site Hipmunk. Like Reddit, Hipmunk is a Y Combinator startup, making this the second time through the program for Huffman.
Reddit was founded in 2005 by Huffman and Alexis Ohanian as one of the first Y Combinator startups. The company was also one of Y Combinator’s first liquidity events when it was acquired by Condé Nast. Few startups have gathered such a rabid and loyal fanbase as Reddit – even with a giant corporate parent they recently were able to raise a substantial amount of money from users to help speed development cycles.
Hipmunk wants to do one thing very, very well: fix the flight search problem. Whether you’re searching on Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia or an airline’s own website the results are often nonsensical – crazy connecting flights like a 17 hour layover in Dallas for a San Francisco to Boston Flight, for example. Or results on multiple pages, making it hard to compare and sort. It’s a mess.
Hipmunk only displays flights that you’ll actually want to take, and it displays them in a user interface that shows you exactly how much you’ll pay and how long you’ll be traveling. When you see the results (see screenshot for example), you’ll never want to see flight results in any other format. It’s one of those that’s so obvious why didn’t I think of that moments. And all results are on one long page, making sorting and comparing much easier.
Hipmunk also has a tabbed interface for doing multiple searches simultaneously, and users can share links to single searches or all the tabs. And they do a great job with airline preferences.
For now Hipmunk is getting it’s data from Orbitz and is referring purchases to them. In the future, says Huffman, Hipmunk will integrate with other travel services.
Huffman even got the old Reddit band back together, recruiting Ohanian as a consultant to design the site and mascot.
Hipmunk has raised a small angel round from Ron Conway’s SV Angel. That’s in addition to the $15,000 or so that Hipmunk received from Y Combinator.
Hipmunk is a travel search site that aims to take the agony out of travel planning. Their mission is to help people book travel faster and more efficiently. Hipmunk was designed to help people who are overwhelmed with pages of irrelevant search results. Hipmunk presents flight results in a visual â€timeline†that allows people to select the best flight for them at a glance. Hotel results are shown on a map so that people can view where in a...
Launched in 2005, Reddit is a social news website that displays news based on your personal preferences and what the community likes. Your preferences are determined based on your history of voting stories up or down. The company was started by two University of Virginia grads, Alexis Ohanian and Steve Huffman in the Y Combinator program. Two others, Christopher Slowe and Aaron Swartz, later joined the team. Conde Nast, owner of Wired and other magazines/websites, acquired Reddit in October of 2006....
Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with “good” ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
San Francisco, CA
Berlin, Germany
Boston, MA
