A 5-year-old startup out of Durham has been acquired – a move intended to help it grow in the Covid era.
Boostopia was bought out by San Francisco-based SupporTrends, a deal disclosed by co-founder Justin Winter in a blog post in September. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
In his blog post, Winter wrote of the challenges of entrepreneurship in Covid, where the firm “inevitably found ourselves always in a position of not being able to move as quickly as we wanted and you deserved.”
Enter in SupporTrends, which uses artificial intelligence to help companies understand and utilize product feedback, a similar mission of Boostopia, which in addition to a side coaching business line also offers an "all-in-one" support operations platform.
Winter did not return a request to comment on the deal.
Oliver Rowen, CEO of SupporTrends, told Triangle Inno that the firms had been in discussion about overlap for “some time.”
“There was an agreement that we had some overlap in our product offerings and they felt like there was some benefit to their customers that could be achieved by switching over to our platform,” Rowen said. “After we evaluated the technical state of affairs between the two platforms, we agreed there were some nice potential synergies.”
Rowen declined to comment on the specifics of the deal’s impact in the Triangle. He wouldn’t say how many employees Boostopia had, or what the future held for Boostopia’s Triangle operation, referring those questions to Winter. Boostopia will continue offering its one-on-one expert coaching solutions, with the “technology side handled by SupporTrends,” Rowen said.
In the blog, Winter said that in making “the strategic decision for Boostopia to cede ownership of its current software solution” to SupporTrends, “we are saying yes to a new focus for Boostopia moving forward.”
He explained it as, “Your coach will still be your Boostopia Coach, but your Reporting product will soon be SupporTrends."
Winter and Paul Davis founded Boostopia in 2016. The pair had worked together at Durham’s Diamond Candles, a company Winter cofounded that put jewelry in candles, allowing customers to melt them down to reveal a hidden treasure inside.
Both men left Diamond Candles in 2016, seemingly hitting the ground running with their new startup, Boostopia.
The firm was a semifinalist for NC IDEA’s seed grant program back in 2017. That same year it also participated in American Underground’s 1776 Challenge Cup.
But it was San Francisco’s LAUNCH Accelerator that would give the firm its first big break, as it was picked for its “Cohort 21.”
In the meantime Davis, who left Boostopia in March, has moved onto a new project. His LinkedIn profile shows he’s founded a new Triangle company, Mosi Tea, which has developed a “multibrew infuser that allows you to brew anything, anywhere.”