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Kimkim raised a total of .7 million in a series of seed investments. The Palo Alto-based company had disclosed a million seed investment in 2016. The other .7 million has been raised since then, with the biggest piece — million — coming from Lightspeed Venture Partners. Launched in December 2015 as HiveTravel, the service quizzes a consumer on what kind of trip they may like, introduces the user to a local travel advisor to finalize the details, and then facilitates the transaction. CEO and co-founder Joost Schreve has past experience in the industry. He previously founded and sold EveryTrail, a location-aware tech company, to TripAdvisor in 2011 and eventually rose to become vice president of mobile product at the online travel company. Several companies have attempted to mix human agents with online booking and have struggled to gain traction. Mobile booking through travel agents never broke through for well-funded and staffed Lola, which is moving to a corporate travel service. Flightfox, another effort at matching travelers with human “travel hackers”, also ended in a pivot to corporate travel. Leisure-focused Kimkim has nine employees. “Our gross booking volume passed million per month recently, growing nicely at a pace of about 2.5 times, year-over-year,” Schreve said.
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