LegalZoom.com — an online platform for tax, legal and compliance solutions — has bought San Antonio-based Earth Class Mail for $63 million. The company, founded in 2004, offers a variety of products that help businesses and individuals access and control their postal mail online.
"We've had our eye on the virtual business address space for quite some time," said LegalZoom CEO Dan Wernikoff. "Earth Class Mail is a category leader, with a broad footprint across all 50 states, a seamless user experience and a modern technology platform with API connectivity."
LegalZoom (Nasdaq: LZ), based in Glendale, California, has over 1,000 employees and saw a total revenue of $148 million in the third quarter of this year.
According to a statement from Earth Class Mail, customers will see no difference in billing, logins or mail management, but the merger will enable the company to invest more in high-tech tools, products and problem-solving experiences for customers. Earth Class Mail is presently available as a web application as well as an iOS or Android app.
The statement added that LegalZoom.com has been instrumental in forming more than 370,000 new small businesses in 2020.
While Earth Class Mail suffered a bankruptcy in 2015, it was acquired in December 2016 by Scaleworks Associates, a San Antonio-based venture equity provider and holding company that brokered its sale to LegalZoom. Scaleworks purchased the company from Xenon Ventures and then-CEO Doug Breaker stayed on for a time to aid the transition.
The company underwent an extensive upgrade to its products under another former CEO, Jess Garza, who arrived in December 2017.
The current CEO of Earth Class Mail, Fergus Burns, is a venture partner at Scaleworks, which has a portfolio of more than half a dozen local software companies — predominantly business-to-business cloud-based software companies -- with aspirations of ultimately scaling in size at least fivefold.
According to a release from LegalZoom, LegalZoom was advised in the transaction by District Capital Partners.
