Hipmunk – San Francisco, Omaha, and Back Again
Hipmunk ran a Thanksgiving giveaway for free airline tickets. Among the many who submitted a 10-word contest entry are the five winners from: 1 – Dallas, 2 – San Francisco, 3 – Salt Lake City, 4 – Long Beach, & 5 – Omaha!
Hipmunk also invested in a timely “runner up” swag giveaway which arrived earlier today. As shown below, and just in time for the fall cooking season, our Hipmunk swag includes a custom oven mitt, cookie cutter, sticker, & post card:
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Closer inspection revealed the oven mitt was made in Pakistan. Hipmunk also connected to the baking themes on the postcard — not another cookie cutter travel site ☺.
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More interesting to Omaha’s start-up scene is the cookie cutter seal, which reveals the custom manufacturer is our local Kitchen Collectables (or KitchenGifts.com online). So there we have it – a Silicon Prairie entrepreneur assisting a great West Coast start-up.
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If this “swag story” doesn’t convince you to check out Hipmunk, perhaps the “Hipmunk story” revealing one co-founder was a Reddit founder will help. These screen shots will encourage you to test drive the best travel startup to come along since Yapta, Kayak, Orbitz, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, or more recently, Google Flight Search.
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Like every *great* travel start-up, Hipmunk offers free mobile apps for Apple’s iOS oen iPhone & iPad (download) & more recently for Android (download). Hipmunk can be found on Facebook and occasionally pops up on Twitter.
P.S. A 10-word non-winning free airline ticket entry: “___ ___, somewhere else, all alone, only phone, reminder home.”
P.P.S. Perhaps Hipmunk can meet with Analog the Prairie Dog at this year’s Big Omaha conference. While taking a break from the great start-up talks, Hipmunk and Analog can chat with Big Omaha Cow!
P.P.P.S. My guess on how Hipmunk discovered KitchenGifts – result #4 on an anonymized Google search for you guessed it – Kitchen Collectables’ custom cookie cutters. If you don’t need one of their custom cookie cutters, they offer many fine animal shapes and others to select from – shipping is free if ordering more than three cookie cutters.
P.P.P.P.S. So yes, the Hipmunk ticket giveaway connects in at least three ways to Omaha – a ticket winner, Kitchen Collectables’ custom cookie cutters, and now, this blog post – Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
P.P.P.P.P.S. If you’ve read this far, you should follow @thoughtpuzzle on Twitter.
Update – Tuesday, 12/7/2011 – Hipmunk launches a December holiday giveaway
– browse Startups channel or 11/25/2011 entries
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entry written by Chris Augeri
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