SAP Concur announced it is shutting down travel price-comparison service Hipmunk — but what SAP is leaving out in its telling is that Hipmunk’s co-founders, Adam Goldstein and Steve Huffman, made an offer to buy back the company.
SAP Concur refused the offer. It intends to shutter both the Hipmunk consumer brand and the Concur Hipmunk business travel incarnation on January 23.
A source who attended an employee meeting at Concur Hipmunk’s offices Tuesday in San Francisco to announce the shutdown confirmed that the issue was raised at the meeting, and that company officials said they were not entertaining any offers for Hipmunk’s assets.
“We carefully considered all potential avenues for Hipmunk and Concur Hipmunk and determined that it was in the best interests of our travelers, customers, our people and SAP Concur to terminate the service and retain all of the intellectual property,” SAP Concur spokesperson Alex Vaught separately told Skift Tuesday afternoon.
Both the source at the meeting and Vaught confirmed that SAP Concur said there would be no layoffs because of the demise of the Hipmunk brand. Vaught said employees who currently work at Hipmunk would be transferring to similar positions within SAP. Hipmunk employed about 50 workers at the time of the acquisition who then transitioned to SAP Concur.
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