A Tampa software startup and Embarc Collective company was acquired this month by an Irish firm.
The acquisition will add training materials from Tampa's OnScreen to Irish education firm Learning Pool's offering. It allows OnScreen access to more resources, and its full team — less than 20 employees — will now join Learning Pool. But the effort to build the platform is not lost on CEO and co-founder Marc Rouhana, he said.
"On a personal level, it's validation," Rouhana said. "It doesn't change much in terms of what [I've] accomplished in my eyes. The work was done, but now you have an entity with legitimacy."
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Private equity firm Marlin Equity Partners backs Learning Pool, which offers digital learning services to companies like Royal Caribbean Group and Villeroy and Boch, according to its website.
OnScreen had been regularly fielding interest from venture capitalists and private equity firms. When Learning Pool reached out, OnScreen founders realized the deal was fitting for their interests, Rouhana said.
"We saw there was a good cultural fit, and our core values aligned and matched in a lot of areas, as well as from the product value proposition," Rouhana said.
OnScreen's customer base includes several Fortune 500 companies and international organizations, including Florida schools and St. Petersburg's Jabil, according to its website.
The OnScreen team, once adopted fully by Learning Pool, may look to establish office space in Tampa and potentially expand its team, Rouhana said.
"As far as the Tampa Bay tech scene, it's amazing to see the growth, caliber and quality of people that exist not in the Tampa Bay area," he said, remembering 15 years ago when tech was "non-existent."
