Each day, DC Inno highlights the moves companies are making on a daily basis—from mergers and acquisitions to shutdowns—in our daily newsletter, The Beat. Trust us, though, we know how difficult it is to keep up. Each quarter we round up "The Departed," or startups that have left the D.C. metro area, been acquired or merged or even shut down. Here's what happened in the first quarter of 2017:
The Shuttered
- Medium DC Office: On Jan. 4, San Francisco-based content publisher Medium shut down its D.C. office and laid off 50 people—or a third of the total Medium staff. Layoffs mostly affected the sales, support and other business teams. In a Medium post, CEO Ev Williams wrote, "While we could continue on our current path — and there is a business case for doing so — we decided that we risk failing on our larger, original mission if we don’t make some proactive changes while we have the momentum and resources to do so."
The Merged and Acquired
- Invincea: Fairfax, Va.,-based cybersecurity firm Invincea was sold to UK-based Sophos for $100 million in early February. The acquisition timing was weird, seeing as Invincea had just raised a $10 million round in November, the company was valued at $130 million and it was suspected to be on track to IPO in the next year. "I'll tell you, the best time to sell is when you're at high velocity, high momentum. The worst time to sell is when you're out of cash," Ghosh told me at the time of the acquisition.
- CEB: Arlington IT analysis giant CEB was acquired by Connecticut-based Gartner, Inc., for a not-so-shabby $2.6 billion on Jan. 5. As The Washington Business Journal noted at the time, this is the second recent deal involving a major Arlington County-based company acquired by an outside firm, with Opower's acquisition by Oracle last year being the other.
- Fishbowl: On Jan. 27, Fortune's Term Sheet reported that Alexandria, Va.-based Fishbowl, Inc., a marketing analytics platform for the restaurant industry, was acquired by Palo Alto-based private equity firm Symphony Technology Group. Fishbowl had raised $19 million in venture funding since its founding in 2000.
- Information Innovators: Fairfax, Va.-based Salient CRGT, a data analytics, software development, cybersecurity and infrastructure solutions provider, acquired Springfield, Va.,-based Information Innovators for an undisclosed amount on Feb. 6. Information Innovators is a mission-driven tech company that usually works with the federal government and specializes in healthcare IT services, and the acquisition allows Salient to expand its healthcare and cloud services. According to a press release, the deal brings Salient's annual revenue up to $500 million, an increase of about $200 million for the company.
- ServicePower: According to Axios' Pro Rata newsletter, Diversis Capital completed its take-private acquisition of McLean, Va.-based ServicePower, a provider of workforce management software, on Feb. 13. The deal was valued at just under $19 million.
Other Moves of Note
- Shift: SF-based P2P car sales platform Shift paused its D.C. operations on Jan. 25 until it closes a dealer license with Hertz. With the pause, the company laid off 10 percent of its staff nationwide. The company rode into Northern Virginia in January 2016 with plans to invest $20 million into hiring new engineers and technicians. A Shift spokesperson said at the time that the pause is a part of Shift's plan to restructure its business to sell automobiles from Hertz's inventory, and only a handful of layoffs occurred in D.C.
- LivingSocial: While LivingSocial was acquired by Groupon back in October, in March, WBJ reported that Groupon had plans to lay off a good chunk of the remaining LivingSocial team and close the D.C. office by the end of the year. RIP.
Did we miss anything? Hit me up at sam@dcinno.com.
