Unified Inbox CEO Toby Ruckert used to identify SocialGrow as a competitor. Come Tuesday, however, the chief executive can say he is welcoming the Concord, Mass.-based company into his international family.
The Singapore-headquartered conversation and social collaboration platform announced it has acquired SocialGrow for an undisclosed amount. As part of the acquisition, SocialGrow's Co-founder and CMO Ken Herron will join Unified Inbox as the company's head of marketing.
Unified Inbox launched in 2008 with the goal of centralizing users' external conversations, social engagement and internal team collaboration across all desktop and mobile devices. Over time, the team noticed the underlying platform featured dozens of other use cases, including that of a sort of digital assistant.
"At the time, we identified SocialGrow as a competitor in that space," Ruckert admitted.
SocialGrow, founded in 2009, had created an application that automated the process of sending invitations to people its users wanted to individually connect with on different social networks, whether Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or LinkedIn. With the app, users were eliminating the time it took to invite people to join their social networks, all while simultaneously growing their online connections.
Ruckert said the Unified Inbox team wanted to create a developer platform that would allow others to build apps over their inbox. Or rather, "Build the inbox of [their] dreams."
"We need to showcase things that have been built on top of our API," he said. "SocialGrow is the first app in that marketplace."
SocialGrow will be integrated into Unified Inbox's product offerings, and will help the company collect and manage users' contacts from their in- and outboxes. Unified Inbox had started creating a similar, competing tool, according to Ruckert, but with the acquisition, they have "shortened the developing time and gotten real brains in the company."
Herron is a big part of those brains, and will be spearheading the company's marketing efforts as it readies for its first commercial launches and prepares for global availability come 2015.
"I'm excited not only to help integrate SocialGrow's key features into new solutions," shared Herron in a statement, "but to work with the Unified Inbox team to create something even bigger — really simplifying communications and collaboration for both organizations and individuals."
In May, Unified Inbox acquired fellow Boston-based startup Smak to integrate its "LifeModes" feature into the company. With the acquisition, users were granted the ability to filter their Unified Inbox for messages that fit their current "LifeMode," such as "Work," "Home" or "Holiday." By doing that, users know which messages to read and respond to first.
Unified Inbox is funded by a group of independent angel investors from different continents, according to Ruckert. Although the company isn't disclosing its financials, Crunchbase lists its total amount raised as $1 million.
Editor's Note: The first version of this piece stated Unified Inbox has raised $150,000 since its founding — a figure Crunchbase previously had listed. That amount has since been updated with a comment from Ruckert.
Image via Unified Inbox
