Arlington-based marketing and PR analytics startup Encore Alert has been acquired by Meltwater, a San Francisco-based brand analytics and consulting firm, for an undisclosed amount. The three-year-old startup had previously raised $545,000 from a mix of angel investors and groups, most notably NextGen Venture Partners. Other local investors included the CIT GAP Fund, Clarabridge CEO Sid Banerjee, SwitchPitch founder Michael Goldstein, and WeddingWire (and NextGen) co-founder Sonny Ganguly. This acquisition though has its roots in Encore's time in the 500 Startups accelerator program.
"We met [Meltwater founder and CEO] Jorn Lyseggen at 500 Startups when he was the keynote speaker and realized there were some possible partnerships," Encore CEO and co-founder James Li said in an interview with DC Inno. "And then it became pretty clear that we would be a pretty good fit for them."
Encore's real-time alerts for marketers on trends and other online events certainly fits into Meltwater's product suite. And that's exactly what will happen. Encore Alert as a product is being renamed Smart Alert, and Li will now serve as its head of product. He and three more of the team, including his co-founders, have already decamped to San Francisco. One of the sales people will remain in D.C. at Meltwater's office here and the two Brazilian engineers will continue to work from Brazil.
"We actually started here last Monday," Li said. "Meltwater doesn't have a product office in the D.C. area so it didn't make sense for us to stay. D.C. is one of the highest-performing sales offices though."
"It became pretty clear that we would be a pretty good fit for them."
Current clients will basically have the same service under the new Smart Alert name and with the price grandfathered in should it be necessary, Li said. The client list includes Georgetown, WeddingWire, Under Armour and the Consumer Technology Association. Although Li wouldn't comment on the financial details of the acquisition or how much investors got out of it, he did say all of the investors were happy with how things turned out.
"NextGen was pretty pivotal in this really coming together," Li said. "This is my first time doing something like this with a company and all of our investors have been very vocal and involved in making it go smoothly."
