Montreal Tech Watch

Travel startup Hopper, known until recently for organizing Big Data hackathons, got recently $8 million in funding from Boston-based Atlas Ventures, according to TechCrunch, who got the story from modifications on altasventure’s crunchbase profile.

Hopper and Frederic Lalonde, CEO and founder, suggested several times they were to open a R&D center in Cambridge, Boston, most probably to be closer to their new funding partner.

Previously, Hopper started with a $2 million investment from Brightspark Ventures, an early-stage investment fund, which also invested in the past in Radian 6 (acquired by Salesforce for $326M). That was 2 years ago though, and Hopper doesn’t have still something to show. It’s an eternity for an Internet startup, where lots of travel startups get developed, launched and become profitable (or close shop!) in less than 2 years. Even Google, a reference in search engine algorithm and big data management, was launched in less than 2 years, and that’s even without taking into account the time necessary for market fit and validation.

Let’s hope the mystery behind Hopper gets unveiled soon, and hope they take over the travel space. Congratulations to the Hopper team and Atlas Ventures!