Oh boy, what a month!
In terms of mergers and acquisitions, August was intense. The following monthly roundup of Boston-area startups that have been acquired or no longer exist counts two closed offices (GoPapaya, Cxense’s Boston office) and a few relevant moves, including LogMeIn acquiring Nanorep and HubSpot acquiring a dating advice startup.
As your fast take away for the month, please remember that Applause is no longer a standalone company. The Framingham-based firm has been acquired by Vista Equity Partners, but its CEO said that an IPO is still possible.
Here are the BostInno Departed from August 2017:
The Shuttered
• It’s game over for GoPapaya, an iPhone and Android app that let you find last-minute reservations and deals at restaurants. Founder Marik Marshak told BostInno while the startup had the technology in place, good user feedback and nearly 100 restaurants on the platform, the main obstacle was the cost of customer acquisition. Marshak added he is now looking for a senior engineering leadership role at a fast-paced company.
• Norwegian tech company Cxense is closing its Boston office after laying off about 35 employees. The layoffs come after Cxense acquired the media business unit of Boston-based Ramp for $10 million in September 2015.
The Merged and Acquired
• CashStar — which was Maine’s top VC-funded startup, according to CB Insights— has been acquired for $175 million by a fintech company based in California called Blackhawk Network. The company will retain its Portland and Boston offices.
• HubSpot just acquired a dating advice startup called Evolve, which went through this year’s Techstars Boston program. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Likely, HubSpot will be using this acquisition to further built the machine learning capabilities of its CRM product.
• Industrial Internet of Things startup Digital Lumens is getting acquired by German lighting manufacturer OSRAM. Financial terms were not provided.
• Applause, an app quality and testing company based in Framingham, has reached an agreement to be acquired by Vista Equity Partners, a San Francisco-based private equity firm that owns Boston-based Bullhorn and a number of other companies. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Doron Reuveni, Applause’s CEO and co-founder, said that the company’s sale to Vista doesn’t preclude an IPO from happening in the future.
• Cambridge-based Dragon Innovation, which consults on hardware startups, was acquired by Avnet, a distributor of electronic components based in Arizona.
• Boston-based cloud backup company Carbonite acquired Seattle-based Datacastle. Financial terms were not disclosed.
• ZoomInfo, a 17-year-old provider of business contact data based in Waltham, has been acquired by Boston-based private equity firm Great Hill Partners. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• Vets First Choice, a Portland-based provider of software for veterinary practices, announced that its parent company, Direct Vet Marketing, has acquired Roadrunner Pharmacy and Atlas Pharmaceuticals.
• TicketWeb, a division of Ticketmaster, has acquired Strobe Labs. The startup went through Techstars Boston in 2016 and dubs itself the “lovechild of Ticketmaster and Palantir.”
• Italian energy giant Enel Group has completed its acquisition of EnerNOC, which was announced in June.
• Curoverse, a Boston-based biomedical company behind the Personal Genome Project at Harvard, has been acquired for an undisclosed amount by genome company Veritas Genetics. The company will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Veritas Genetics.
• Sovos, a Wilmington-based provider of tax compliance and reporting software, announced that it has acquired Chilean eReceipt compliance startup Paperless. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• LogMeIn has acquired Nanorep, an Israeli startup that makes self-service chatbot and virtual assistant software. LogMeIn is paying $45M for Nanorep and up to an additional $5M depending on the achievement of certain milestones and retention targets in the two years after the deal closes.
If you think there’s a startup missing from this list, email me at lmaffei@americaninno.com
