Hipmunk’s Adam Goldstein talks travel, the future and that $4.2 million in funding

It was only a few days ago that we spoke with Adam Goldstein from Hipmunk after a shakeup came to the world of Y Combinator. Today, Hipmunk itself is in the news after recieving $4.2 million in Series A funding, secondary to a $1 million seed round.

But, this is The Next Web. Funding isn’t what we focus on here. We wanted to know more about why Hipmunk (a deceptively simple site, in appearance) needed the funding and what it plans to do with it. Along the way, we get Goldstein’s thoughts on the state of the current travel industry, what’s wrong with it and what will happen over the next few years.

No time to listen right now? We’ll give you the Cliff’s Notes version, too.

I started by asking Goldstein why Hipmunk needed the funds. While the greater answer is obvious, the details are interesting:

“Our ambitions for taking the agony out of the travel business were being somewhat constrained by the resources that we had, states Goldstein. “We wanted to be able to hire more people, especially engineers.”

Looking toward the future, Goldstein wasn’t in a position to make any announcements today, but states that there are a number of features that Hipmunk plans to add that will make “a number of people pretty happy, but will probably require some more expenditure than what we’ve been living off of so far.”

But what about more features? While many of us use and love Hipmunk, the ability to add hotels and other services would be amazing. To this, Goldstein’s response is reassuring:

I think it’s pretty likely that we’ll do it eventually..I think we have, to a certain extent, solved a lot of the problems in flight search. But really, we realize that that’s only one chunk of what people are searching for when they’re searching for travel.

Goldstein goes on to talk about the Google/ITA ordeal, what it could mean for Hipmunk and the impending death of brick and mortar travel agencies. Give a listen and look for more interviews coming soon on The Next Web.

Adam Goldstein Hipmunk Interview by The Next Web