Confirmed: Hipmunk raises $4.2M to “de-agonize” flight search

Hipmunk co-founder Adam Goldstein just emailed me to confirm that his flight search startup has raised the funding I reported on last week.

The company raised around $4.2 million in a round led by Ignition Partners, he said. Hipmunk also lined up investments from some folks with a strong background in travel, including former Expedia CEO Rich Barton, another former Expedia CEO Erik Blachford, Preview Travel founder Jim Hornthal, TravelPost co-founder Simon Breakwell, and (okay, this one isn’t really travel-related) Real Networks founder Rob Glaser.

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As I mentioned last week, Hipmunk is already my favorite flight search site — I go to Hipmunk to book all my domestic travel, and the VentureBeat team also used it to find our flights down to Palm Springs for the DEMO conference next month. The company’s goal is to make it easier to find the trip you want, not just the one that’s cheapest. Your options are laid out in an easy-to-read grid, and you can also sort flights by “agony”, which incorporates factors like duration and numbers of stops.

“We’re using the money to hire the talent we need to keep Hipmunk leading the way with travel search innovation,” Goldstein said. “There are still plenty of ways we’d like to de-agonize the process even more.”

Hipmunk was incubated by Y Combinator and previously raised a $1 million angel round. It also has one of the cutest startup logos around. Goldstein just sent me some fan art, pictured above.