UpCurve, which sells digital marketing products branded as ThriveHive, is acquiring Denver-based technology company Closely. As a result, the ThriveHive team is expanding in Colorado with a fifth office, together with Boston, Quincy, Manchester, N.H. and Las Vegas, N.V.
The main reason why UpCurve was interested in acquiring Closely is Perch, its mobile app for small businesses that will be integrated into the ThriveHive suite. Perch allows business owners to monitor social posts and reviews for their business and competitors by aggregating live social data of over 500,000 business locations across six social channels including Yelp, Instagram, and Facebook.
"The mobile app allows a business to follow all of their own activity and build a custom list of other businesses to watch, such as competitors and nearby businesses," Adam Blake, SVP of marketing and GM of SaaS at ThriveHive, explained in an email to BostInno. "Think of it as the local business' social newsfeed to stay in-the-know, see and learn what's working, and respond anytime."
Following the acquisition, the Perch app will become part of ThriveHive’s Guided Marketing Platform. "First... Perch brings advanced guided social marketing functionality that will help our customers make the most out of social media," Blake said. "Second, Perch is built on top of a search engine like infrastructure, which means we're expanding our dataset with rich profile data from more than 500,000 business locations."
Closely, the maker of Perch, was founded in 2011 by serial entrepreneur Perry Evans, who will be joining ThriveHive as SVP of product strategy and corporate development based in Denver, effective immediately.
Closely’s office in Denver, which currently has seven employees, will become a ThriveHive product and engineering hub. There will not be any layoffs after the acquisition, Blake said. "We'll be looking to add more people to the office in Denver to build out another product and engineering hub," he added.
Blake said that ThriveHive has known about the Perch app since close its original launch and it has been watching its progress for quite some time. The two companies started talking around two years ago.
A 2015 TechStars Boston alumn, ThriveHive was acquired by Quincy-based Propel Marketing for $11.8 million in 2016. Last June, Propel Marketing rebranded as ThriveHive. ThriveHive is now a product area within UpCurve, together with UpCurve Cloud.
“We are thrilled to welcome Closely to our team. They have a disruptive business model, offering guided social marketing to SMBs, that perfectly aligns with our Guided Marketing Platform, bringing us closer to the creation of a unified integrated play,” Peter Cannone, CEO of ThriveHive, said in a statement.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
