FamilyID, a Lexington-based provider of an online registration platform for schools and community programs, has been acquired by Sandy, Utah-based Arbiter, an athletic event management company. No financial terms were disclosed.
FamilyID now joins the suite of Arbiter's offerings across athletic and event management. Its software is used by schools, museums, sports leagues, art programs, parent-teacher organizations and more.
Founded in 2010, FamilyID aims to make online registration and transactions for programs and activities "as easy as buying a toy on Amazon," as BostInno wrote back in 2015. Founder and CEO Rochelle Nemrow, a mother of two herself, created FamilyID as a direct response to her own frustration dealing with unreliable paper forms, insecure transactions and a general lack of organization.
"These two great teams uniting into a single powerhouse means I get to continue to execute on the vision I had nearly 10 years ago, at a table in my living room, surrounded by stacks of paper registration forms," Nemrow wrote in a blog post about the acquisition.
In an interview with BostInno, Nemrow said that she was not initially looking to sell FamilyID. Rather, the startup had been pursuing a partnership with Arbiter over the course of nearly a year. During those conversations, she said, it became increasingly clear that "an acquisition just made a lot more sense."
"Not only does it meet the criteria for what would be good for my investors and my shareholders, but for me personally, it was really important that this was not an end to FamilyID but rather a next opportunity for us," Nemrow said. "This would allow us to do all of the things we've been dreaming about doing, and do them better and faster, and it represented opportunity for all of my employees."
Nemrow will join Arbiter's executive team, becoming chief strategy officer at the 36-year-old company. Meanwhile, all FamilyID employees will become Arbiter employees but will continue to work on the FamilyID product.
Prior to its acquisition, the startup had brought in about $2 million in venture capital, Nemrow said.
In 2015, the startup was one of five companies chosen for the Contact Contact SMBInno Loft startup accelerator program in Waltham as part of the accelerator's second class. That same year, FamilyID brought in $850,000 in its first round of institutional funding led by Boston Seed Capital with participation from CommonAngels Ventures.
"This [acquisition] is really going to allow us to not only broaden what we're delivering to our customers, but broaden our customer base to bring in a lot of organizations that we didn't have the wherewithal to bring in," Nemrow said. "We've been highly focused on schools and sports, but all of the work that we do with community programs and camps—I think it's really going to allow us to expand in the communities we serve with all different types of programs and activities."
