Beginnings are messy, but ends tend to be, well, final, even for startup companies. Whether they exit the stage quietly behind a door, go out with a bang or depart after being handed a huge bag of cash, there are always young companies shutting down or moving on. An acquisition isn't always a happy outcome if the price is below what was invested, or if it's done out of desperation rather than choice. Take a look at the area startups that have shut down or been acquired in the last year. The big question is, who's next?
Gone Away
Waveborn, a startup that sold Italian sunglasses and helped fund cataract surgeries for the needy, wound down over the summer. The company launched five years ago. CEO Mike Malloy told DC Inno he is now a program coordinator at Halcyon House, the startup incubator for social entrepreneurship.
Ride-share startup Split shut down its customer ride service at the beginning of October. But, while the company may no longer have a public-facing side, it still exists and is working on a new, data-centric business model.
"We're working on a few kind of big ideas of how we can use our technology in ways that will impact transportation," Split CEO Ario Keshani told DC Inno in an interview at the time. "We learned a lot from our years in D.C. about moving patterns of people, the transportation needs of cities and companies. We've started working with businesses to bridge the gap getting employees to offices too."
Silica Labs started up, working on a kind of visual navigation system. Founder Stephanie Nguyen, who is also one of the organizers of the DC Tech Meetup, is now working at the U.S. Digital Service and the company has stopped operating according to people close to the company.
Urban Igloo, a startup built around helping landlords and renters connect with each other, officially ceased operating in D.C. around October last year. "We continue to see a shift in the apartment industry’s service needs and the growth of free internet listing services that connect renters directly with landlords. Urban Igloo has closed our rental locator division to huddle and discuss better ways to serve our renters and landlords moving forward," founder Rick Gersten wrote in a post to Urban Igloo's website at the time. Whether it's entirely dead or just dormant is left vague.
Acquired
In January, Vienna, Va.-based social bookmarking and publisher audience platform AddThis got acquired by software giant Oracle for $175 million. Oracle brought AddThis into the Oracle Data Cloud business, a happy exit for the company as it was reaching the point of having to make big financial decisions about its future.
Cybersecurity firm FireEye acquired iSight Partners, in January in a $200 million deal. Technically based in Texas, iSight had a major presence in Virginia, and brought new services to FireEye's feature list, with agents across the world who are investigating suspected hacker activity.
In Febreuary, FireEye also acquired Alexandria-based cybersecurity company Invotas. Invotas' technology focuses on "security automation and orchestration."
D.C.-based Macaw was acquired by New York-based Invision for an undisclosed amount in February. The "design for coding" company raised almost $300,000 crowdfunding on Kickstarter in 2013 to develop an image editor that translates visuals into HTML and CSS code.
D.C.-based Content Analyst was acquired in March by Chicago-based kCura, merging its technology analyzing and managing data on litigation and other issues for large companies, law firms and government agencies.
One of the biggest stories this year came in April when McLean, Va.-based Cvent, was acquired for $1.65 billion by Vista Equity Partners. The publicly traded cloud software company that focuses on event management products was taken private in the acquisition.
Another major take-private hit in May when Oracle bought Arlington-based cloud utility software startup Opower for $525 million. Opower, which went public in 2014, is counted an important success story for the region.
Orchestro, a Bethesda, Md.-based provider of "demand signal repositories and preemptive analytics for retail and omni-channel fulfillment," was acquired in June by 2open, a supply chain operating network backed by Insight Venture Partners.
D.C. tech scene pillar iStrategyLabs was bought in August by the J. Walter Thompson Company, a part of multinational advertising conglomerate WPP. The D.C.-based digital ad firm has been a central player in the community since founder Peter Corbett launched it in 2007.
Also in August, McLean, Va.-based data analytics startup PlanetRisk acquired Tysons Corner-based Analytic Strategies for an undisclosed sum. PlanetRisk uses, collects and analyzes data to predict and preempt threats, while Analytic Strategies is best known for its work with the federal government, expanding PlanetRisk's tools and potential client list.
