An e-commerce firm in Cary has been bought out by Fishbowl Inventory, a Utah-based software developer in the portfolio of private equity group Diversis Capital of California.
Sellware has a handful of employees, all of whom are joining the 250-person team at Fishbowl. CEO Anthony Musselwhite founded Sellware in 2004 and said the local team will likely get bigger through the deal.
“I believe that with the commitment to growth that Diversis has provided to Sellware, we’re going to certainly be able to tap into the talent pool in the Triangle here,” he said.
The North Carolina State University graduate didn’t intend to create a company – he was helping his wife “sell some stuff on eBay.” Musselwhite, a veteran of firms such as Nortel, Blue Cross NC and Motricity, had always been interested in e-commerce and automation.
“So basically, I tried to build a simple solution for my wife, to make it easier to sell on eBay and on her own e-commerce site,” he said.
Musselwhite talked about the solution in online forums and realized other people were interested – so he quit his day job at Motricity and rebuilt the platform.
“That’s how it all really started,” he said.
Musselwhite, who had spent his entire career up until that point working on other people’s ideas, suddenly had a startup.
“I really wanted to be able to chart my own path,” he said. “But it’s come a long way since then. Now it’s really about making sure that our customers come first.”
Sellware is a B2B business. Its customers are business-to-consumer e-commerce sellers – “and our goal is to make their job easier,” Musselwhite said.
Under Fishbowl, the team will be “laser focused on growth,” he said.
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Musselwhite, who is joining Fishbowl's senior management team with the deal, said he wasn’t initially looking to sell. Like a lot of founders, he’s seen multiple offers from private equity over the years. But the differentiator when Diversis reached out was its mindset, he said.
“They really impressed me with the fact that they were really interested in technology investment,” he said. “And they recognized that good businesses are made up of talented humans.”
Musselwhite said he had other potential buyout offers – “but I didn’t seriously consider any of them,” he said.
He declined to release the deal’s financials but said he's “very happy” with the terms.
“It’s a challenging time from a fundraising standpoint … they really could dig in and see the value,” he said. “They weren’t concerned by market conditions.”
In a statement, Fishbowl CEO Peter Osberg said the acquisition “will enable Fishbowl to promptly address the e-commerce needs of our current customers and swiftly expand into new markets for future growth.”
Fishbowl was founded in 2001 as an ERP software solution for businesses, offering SaaS and desktop software solutions. Last year, it acquired Red Salt, its largest distribution partner located in Brisbane, Australia.
Diversis, founded in 2014, focuses its portfolio on the software and technology space and has more than $1 billion in assets under management.