Concur收购Hipmunk，此前其押注搜索能消除旅行痛苦

做的是什么生意

Hipmunk is a consumer travel-search portal comparing flights and hotels, which was first to add factors beyond price — number of stops, hotel location and similar details — to how results were searched and sorted.

启动资金：Around $55M raised since its 2010 founding, including a $5.75M round in April 2016 after an attempted raise at a down round.

起因

Hipmunk was founded in 2010 by Adam Goldstein and Steve Huffman, co-founder of Reddit (which Huffman had returned to as CEO by 2016), and it was a Y Combinator S10 startup per the acquisition coverage. Goldstein later described the founding vision as taking the agony out of travel and travel planning, going after the travel-search market with a Kayak-style portal and a friendlier interface.

经过

Hipmunk carved out a place as a travel search portal, but scale stayed elusive. It had raised around $55 million since 2010, yet its last valuation of about $96 million dated to 2014, and TechCrunch reported that by April 2016 it was trying to raise money in a down round before taking a small $5.75 million round that month. The wider market was consolidating: Kayak was acquired by Priceline in 2012 for $1.8 billion, and Concur itself had been bought by SAP in 2014 for $8.3 billion, subsequently acquiring startups such as TripIt to augment its travel and expense platform.

结果

On 2016-09-13 Concur announced it was acquiring Hipmunk to add better search to its travel and expense management platform. Terms were undisclosed and the deal was expected to close in 2016. Concur's president said Hipmunk would keep delighting consumers while informing the innovation agenda for corporate clients, and Goldstein said the combination could serve frequent travelers in both leisure and business travel.

可借鉴之处

更好的消费者界面赢的是用户，不是市场：当旅行平台整合时，搜索品牌的剩余价值是嵌入他人更大旅行产品中的搜索功能。