New York-based musculoskeletal therapy provider SWORD Health has acquired Pittsburgh-based Vigilant Technologies (VIT), a workplace injury prevention company founded in 2015, for an undisclosed sum.
VIT's products include wearable technology that teaches users how to prevent soft tissue injury and pain in the workplace, which aligns with SWORD's musculoskeletal therapy work that it provides to its clients.
"The SWORD ethos has always been to develop the best-of-breed clinical solutions that provide exceptional member outcomes," Virgilio Bento, CEO of SWORD Health, said in a prepared statement. "We’re excited about VIT’s technology, which adds to SWORD’s capability to provide acute, chronic, post-surgical and preventative MSK care."
Andy Chan, VIT's CEO and co-founder, said he and his team of four full-time workers, along with some part-time contractors, will remain in Pittsburgh after joining the SWORD team, which is looking to build out its portfolio across North America. Chan is also optimistic about how the deal could serve as a potential inspiration for Pittsburgh's startup scene.
"We're really excited because we were just a budding startup, but SWORD has hit that scaling portion of the startup phase and so for us to jump on board and being able to take our solutions to millions of members, it is exciting," Chan said. "I think that's going to be pretty cool for the ecosystem, especially as we look to take SWORD into unicorn status really soon, in the next year hopefully. To be able to bring another unicorn in town would be pretty exciting for the tech ecosystem."
Chan said he will take on the role as a product manager lead for SWORD, and the startup's other co-founder, Connor Young, will take on the role as head of engineering for SWORD. As for the VIT brand, it will "slowly ramp down" as it becomes integrated with SWORD, Chan said. Its website, vitinitiative.com, already redirects to SWORD's website.
He's thrilled about where the future will take him following years of work with his small team.
"It makes all the tough times in the beginning just worth it quite frankly," Chan said. "We took our startup from the beginning stages to the seed stage and now to go to a company to try to take them to IPO and become a unicorn, I've never been a part of that journey, but it's kinds of fulfilling from the founder perspective."
Two Pittsburgh-based organizations, seed-stage investor organization Innovation Works and venture capital firm 412 Venture Fund LP, are both investors in VIT.
"This is good news for VIT and for our region," Ilana Diamond, managing partner for 412 Venture Fund, said in an email statement to the Business Times. "By acquiring VIT, Sword is tapping into two of our region's strengths: Health and IOT. We are excited that our first exit from 412 Venture Fund has attracted a high growth international tech company to build a presence in Pittsburgh."
In late June, SWORD Health announced it completed an $85M Series C investment round led by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based venture capital firm General Catalyst. A few months earlier, the company raised $25 million in Series B funding, putting its total funding round at $110 million in the span of a six-month period.
