Hopper, a Montreal, Canada-based startup, has raised $8 million in fresh funding from Atlas Venture and previous backer Brightspark Ventures to try and ‘reinvent travel search’.
Hopper is still in stealth mode, but if you’d like to learn more about what they’re cooking, check out this Boston.com profile or this article from Xconomy Boston.
Indeed, Hopper plans to open a new office in Boston, where it expects to double its engineering team over the next year.
The company is essentially building a ‘travel discovery’ engine for consumers, enabling people to discover destinations and products using only keywords such as “best beaches in Europe”.
The startup was conceived by Chief Engineer Sebastien Rainville, CEO Frederic Lalonde and Chief of Product Joost Ouwerkerk. The latter two came from Expedia, which acquired Lalonde’s previous company, Newtrade Technologies, back in 2002.
Hopper was originally founded in 2007 and previously raised $2 million in 2008, bringing the company’s total funding to $10 million today.
Jeff Fagnan, partner at Atlas Venture, will join the Hopper board of directors.
Hopper is developing a website for consumer travel discovery. Its travel-oriented search engine allows users to discover destinations and products using only keywords. Hopper is applying cluster computing techniques to build the world’s largest database of travel information. The company is using Machine Learning, NoSQL databases and Big Data processing to transform raw web pages into structured and organized information, enabling a faster, more complete, and more flexible search than traditional travel sites.
Sponsored Ads
Sponsored Ads
Sponsored Ads
