Startup darling Hipmunk has wooed former-Expedia execs Rich Barton, Erik Blachford and Simon Breakwell to join a team investing $4.2 million in the business.
The group includes ex-Expedia CEOs Barton and Blachford, former-European boss Breakwell as well as Ignition Partners, Jim Hornthal of Triporati and Rob Glaser, founder of Real Networks.
Hipmunk says the investment round totals $4.2 million, although a recent SEC filing says the total offering amount could eventually reach $5.8 million.
Details of the backers were not release until today. Previous rounds of investment came in the form of Y Combinator and SV Angel.
CEO Adam Goldstein says much of the investment will be concentrated on hiring more engineers and development of the technology behind the widely talked about metasearch service [see TLabs Showcase - Hipmunk].
The site has attracted praise mostly for its unique flight search interface, but Hipmunk co-founder Steve Huffman’s former life as one of the folk behind social bookmarking service Reddit ensured the site attracted the attention of the tech media in Silicon Valley more than you’re average new travel website.
Launched initially using the Orbitz flights affiliate service, Hipmunk secured a deal with ITA Software in November to use the QPX system for airfare shopping and pricing.
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Can’t help but think a little travel galaxy may be forming with Rich Barton as its center –
Here’s the roster so far: Company (Investors) – Travel Niche
Hipmunk (Barton/Blachford/Breakwell) – Air Content & Search / User Interface
Travelpost (Barton/Breakwell) – Product Reviews / User Generated Content
Room 77 (Barton/Blachford) – Hotel Content & Search
Would think all these groups may be partnering with each other as a natural alignment makes sense for all involved.
Perhaps even more interesting is that Hipmunk essentially leverages ITA Software’s old Time Bar interface, Travelpost originally came to Kayak through its SideStep acquisition and Room 77 acquired OpTrip.
Perhaps Barton is mixing up the equivalent of some gourmet travel meatloaf by using the leftovers of several other firms.
A very different scale from the IAC acquisitions of Hotwire, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor that were done during Barton’s & Blachford’s respective tenures at the helm of Expedia.
Some interesting star gazing here, Bob. Agree with your assessment that there seems to be a certain pattern here with these three ventures that could make for a compelling integrated whole. Looks like Barton is bitten by the travel industry bug now that Zillow seems to be up and running well and maybe requires less of his attention. Stay tuned as the saying goes….