Philadelphia advertising technology startup Sidecar has been acquired by New York-based competitor Quartile.
The deal closed last week, and the terms were not disclosed. Sidecar will take Quartile’s name, and the company will retain its office at One South Broad in Philadelphia. The acquisition will fold Sidecar’s 180 employees into Quartile, bringing the total headcount to 300.
Quartile CEO Daniel Knijnik will remain chief executive, and Sidecar CEO Andre Golsorkhi will serve as president of the company.
Sidecar is an e-commerce tech firm that uses artificial intelligence to help retailers determine where and how to market their products. It was founded in 2014 with a focus on the e-commerce space for small and large online retailers.
Sidecar raised a total $33.5 million in venture capital before the acquisition. It last raised a $7.5 million round in 2019. Investors included Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania, Harbert Growth Partners, Osage Venture Partners, Ascent Venture Partners and Robin Hood Ventures.
Quartile and Sidecar combined have more than 5,000 customers with more than $2 billion of ad spend under management, the companies said in a statement. The two companies are both in a “very high growth mode” going forward, Golsorkhi said. He declined to share Sidecar’s revenue figures.
An acquisition was not the initial exit goal for Sidecar, Golsorkhi said in an interview with PHL Inno. Sidecar’s first priority was to build a product and make it as widely available as possible, and a sale was a path to get there, he said.
“The vision is unchanged that we want to be the largest e-commerce marketing platform in the market,” he said. “We want to be cross-channel, cross-border, and now this acquisition and these two companies coming together has allowed us to really put our stake on that claim.”
Sidecar and Quartile have strengths that are complementary to each other, but there was a bit of overlap between the two companies’ customer bases. Sidecar focuses largely on the Google and social media space — with some offerings in large marketplaces like Amazon and Walmart — while Quartile’s specialty is with those large marketplaces with some features in Google and social media.
The startup has had strong growth on its own, but joining Quartile expands what its services and technologies can do for a wider base of customers, Golsorkhi said.
“We came across each other as being strong players in the things that the other one wanted. And then we immediately started a conversation around this idea that if we each want to go do this on our own, why not do this together?” he said.
