A string of Silicon Valley luminaries including the controversial Jason Calcanis are among a group of investors backing trip planner Wanderfly to the tune of $1 million.
The site launched in private beta last summer [see TLabs Showcase - Wanderfly] and initially had seed funding from a group of angel investors.
Three months on from its wider opening in October 2010, iIt now counts Calcanis, Charles River Ventures, StartupAngel, James Bailey and Roger Dickey as those in the latest round of funding, announced this week.
The outspoken Calcanis is probably best known for creating Weblogs (later sold to AOL) and the Mahalo platform. More recently he and TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington have had a very public falling out, triggering reams of coverage on sites obsessed with the Silicon Valley bubble.
Wanderfly says it has "served" more than 500,000 trips to over 200 countries since launch and added a number of partners and services, including deals with Hotels.com and Jetsetter as well as a widget tool for third party sites.
The latest round of investment will be targeted in three areas, the company says: personalisation through social planning tools, marketing and syndication.
Heady praise from Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary who says Wanderfly is the "best travel site I've seen" in 15 years as an investor.