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Hipmunk Says Goodbye

hipmunk.com

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Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#271

Post by wpietri »

205guy wrote: post #226
wpietri wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if sale below M.A.P. drops the bottom out of a market and kills an industry, the product can disappear from common production and the consumer doesn't benefit in the long run Is there an example of this happening anywhere in recent history? I ask because it seems absurd to me that there is an industry so fragile that retailers taking a bit less profit would lead to sudden, total collapse. (And doubly absurd this mi…

This exact scenario happened in Hawaii, a small regional market for local (inter-island) flights. There were 2 airlines (Hawaiian and Aloha) competing on price and service, but it was essentially a duopoly with moderate and almost identical prices. Then both started expanding their routes to the mainland US, got overextended when the next downturn hit and declared bankruptcy one after the other (they kept flying at t…

You say it isn't sustainable, but you also say Hawaiian is still going. Which is it?

The claim was "kills an industry", but from what you say, the industry's still going. And you say the critical factor was "kept them away from the good gates", which is exactly the kind of thing that is solved with careful regulation, not deregulation.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#272

Post by anonu »

kick wrote: post #17

For people who don't know why this is relevant to HN: Hipmunk (YC S10) was co-founded by Steve Huffman as a rebound from reddit (YC S05), and got sold to Concur a few years ago.

I'm sorry. It's relevant to hn beyond the fact that it's a YC alum that coufounded it...

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#273

Post by anonu »

johnhess wrote: post #51

This is a shame, and says more about the consolidation of the tech industry than Hipmunk's product. One of Hipmunk's founders spoke to a course that I was in about their experience as a founder and how they were running their business. A few weeks later, a well known founder of another travel search company visited the class and said outright that if Hipmunk did have any success, that they would copy those features a…

> says more about the consolidation of the tech industry than Hipmunk's product

I kinda disagree. Hipmunk did not have access to the data that gave users a complete pictures on all travel routes. Even if they had a nice UI/ux, the underlying data was incomplete.

People naturally gravitated to sites where they found a route they wanted for the price they wanted.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#274

Post by kick »

anonu wrote: post #272
kick wrote: post #17

For people who don't know why this is relevant to HN: Hipmunk (YC S10) was co-founded by Steve Huffman as a rebound from reddit (YC S05), and got sold to Concur a few years ago.

I'm sorry. It's relevant to hn beyond the fact that it's a YC alum that coufounded it...

Not really. It's a flight-booking company. If Kayak or something got closed, it'd be deemed off-topic for HN. Kayak and Hipmunk do virtually the same thing. The difference? One was by a YC founder, the other has T.V. commercials.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#275

Post by schimmy_changa »

kick wrote: post #274
anonu wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry. It's relevant to hn beyond the fact that it's a YC alum that coufounded it...

Not really. It's a flight-booking company. If Kayak or something got closed, it'd be deemed off-topic for HN. Kayak and Hipmunk do virtually the same thing. The difference? One was by a YC founder, the other has T.V. commercials.

I disagree - it was a really great product, something to be emulated. When it came out, there was nothing like it, and it truly felt like a step change compared to the existing sites. It was not quite the same impact, but felt like a shadow of the feeling when you first used Google instead of Altavista.

One thing the HN community values is really good, well-executed products, and it's instructive to learn what killed this great one. I'm sorry to see that it was mostly antitrust shenanigans and competitors catching up (flights.google.com is very good now) that made the gap between Hipmunk and others fade.

Hipmunk however has made searching for flights better than if it had never existed at all, and I am thankful for that. I still don't think the UI of Google flights is quite as good as it TBH.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#276

Post by shiftpgdn »

ericd wrote: post #251
nraynaud wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone told me they spend 2 years in a team responsible for some of the undo menu at a giant software company. Incredible siloing.

I was interviewing at a megacorp a long while back, my interviewer was solely responsible for the pie charts in some old application. He mentioned in the interview that it was totally feasible to run your own startup on the side.

That sounds like quite literally hell on earth. Thanks but no thanks (never mind the legal pandoras box of running your startup at your day job.)

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#277

Post by liability »

Jasper_ wrote: post #216
wpietri wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if sale below M.A.P. drops the bottom out of a market and kills an industry, the product can disappear from common production and the consumer doesn't benefit in the long run Is there an example of this happening anywhere in recent history? I ask because it seems absurd to me that there is an industry so fragile that retailers taking a bit less profit would lead to sudden, total collapse. (And doubly absurd this mi…

The industry of mobile apps and games has seen rates go unsustainably low, often to 99c or free, causing them to make up the difference with in-app purchases, ad networks, tracking, and lots and lots of psychological tricks. Nobody can dare simply sell a game on the iOS or Google Play store for $5 or $10 anymore, because there's far more "free" ones out there. This has turned lots of people off of these storefronts.…

Alternatively, mobile game developers can't be assed make a game that's worth more than a dollar. Mobile devs aren't victims; their users are victims and they are the victimizers.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#278

Post by enra »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #147
ufmace wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's sadly true for most. I have noticed that Southwest is a notable outlier in all this - they don't do any of that stuff. They also don't seem to register their flights on most of the search sites. It's like they know that those customers choose based on raw price alone, no room to sell any other differences. I make it a point to search their company site first before trying any other flight search.

On southwest you have to buy priority boarding or whatever it’s called if you want to sit next to a specific person, otherwise you will end up filling individual middle seats. It’s all one and the same to me, they all have to meet their revenue targets.

This has almost never happened to me when flying maybe 20 flights with Southwest together with someone, but it has happened with traditional airlines like American or Delta when they have full flights.

With SW if you buy the tickets together, and check in first possible moment (24h before), you get assigned the same boarding position, usually a early B number. Then you board together and likely half of the plane is likely still empty when you board.

People also sometimes say they are reserving the seat for someone. Have never bought priority boarding.

Re: Hipmunk Says Goodbye

#280

Post by jcims »

wpietri wrote: post #181
shadowgovt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It’s also obviously illegal" I'm not sure it's as obvious as the author assumes. In the shopping sector, there's a concept of 'minimum advertised price' that every online store respects, which is set by manufacturers under the same carrot-stick arrangement (i.e. it's the price the manufacturer believes would drive the value of the entire market sector down if it were common, shopping aggregators aren't allowed to…

> if sale below M.A.P. drops the bottom out of a market and kills an industry, the product can disappear from common production and the consumer doesn't benefit in the long run Is there an example of this happening anywhere in recent history? I ask because it seems absurd to me that there is an industry so fragile that retailers taking a bit less profit would lead to sudden, total collapse. (And doubly absurd this mi…

I believe something like this happens in pharmaceuticals where creating or recertifying manufacturing capability is incredibly expensive.

If a drug price drops below the point where there is insufficient margin to create or sustain manufacturing capability, it stops getting made. This is one source of drug shortages and, to my understanding, why the world health org created a list if essential medicines. This would be a list that countries could use to develop availability controls.

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