M&A roundup - week ending 7/16/16

Google acquired Kifi; eBay bought SalesPredict and Ticket Utils; Pinterest purchased Math Camp

 

Google acquired Kifi, an app for collecting links from across the Internet, which teams could then collaborate on. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

The Kifi service and data will not become part of Google. The service will remain fully functional for existing users for a few more weeks, before its shut down. The company is no longer accepting new registrations. The team at Kifi will be joining the Spaces team at Google.

Founded in 2012, Kifi had raised $11.2 million in venture funding from Don Katz, Oren Zeev, SGVC and Wicklow Capital.

eBay acquired SalesPredict, a predictive analytics company. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

An undisclosed number of SalesPredict’s employees will be join eBay’s structured data organization, working from eBay’s Israeli Development Center in Netanya. That includes Yaron Zakai-Or, Co-Founder and CEO of SalesPredict, who will serve as a Director of Product Management, Technology, as well as  Kira Radinsk, Co-Founder and CTO of the company, who will be Director of Data Science & Chief Scientist, eBay Israel.

Following the close of the acquisition, eBay will evaluate what technology of SalesPredict will be integrated into eBay’s platform.

Founded in 2012, SalesPredict had raised $5.1 million in venture funding from investors that included Yandex, AfterDox, Redline Capital, KGC Capital, and Pitango Venture Capital.

eBay also acquired Ticket Utils, a ticket broker software company. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Ticket Utils will become part of the StubHub platform. In addition to integrating with StubHub, Ticket Utils will continue to allow sellers to list on the 20 other marketplaces that it currently provides for. 

All 35 of Ticket Utils' employees, including president Brian Hampel and CTO Muktak Joshi, are expected to join StubHub.

Chinese mobile ad tech company Mobvista acquired GameAnalytics, a behavioral analytics platform for game developers. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

GameAnalytics will continue to operate as an independent platform, and will still be providing its core service to customers.

Pinterest acquired mobile app developer Math Camp. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

10 employees will be coming to work at Pinterest. That includes Paul Davison, Founder and CEO of Math Camp, along with co-founder Ben Garrett. 

Founded in 2011, Math Camp is the company behind apps like Highlight, Shorts and Roll. Pinterest is not acquiring any of Math Camp's technology, and the company will sunset its apps in the coming weeks, though it will also open-source a wide range of libraries and frameworks.

Math Camp was founded in 2011 and ​raised $5.5 million in two rounds from Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ), Benchmark, Greycroft Partners, SV Angel, Betaworks, CrunchFund, Slow Ventures and numerous angel investors in Silicon Valley and New York. 

SplitmediaLabs, makers of Internet broadcast and live streaming software, acquired social discovery platform, Player.me, and tournament management service, Challonge. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisitions are part of the company’s $10 million investment strategy to create a platform that connects the entire gaming community with the content they love, enhancing the gaming experiences of players everywhere.

The combined entity will have a total of over 8 million registered users, 2 million unique monthly visitors and over 90,000 tournaments created each month.

Amazon Web Services acquired cloud-based Integrated Development Environment Cloud9 IDE. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Cloud9 IDE will continue to work with its Ace Open Source community and to provide our innovative services to you and our hundreds of thousands of customers worldwide. 

Founded in 2010, Cloud9 IDE had raised $5.55 million in venture funding from Accel, Atlassian and Balderton Capital.

Digital marketing agency Threepipe acquired performance marketing agency Spot Digital. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition boost Threepipe's natural search and SEO capability. The SEO business will be absorbed into Threepipe, which now grows to 60 people working across consumer and business brands including Reiss, Sweaty Betty, Oracle and Campari.

The 12 person Spot Digital team is moving into Threepipe offices with immediate effect and Tony Thomas, the MD of Spot, will join Jim Hawker and Farhad Koodoruth as board directors of Threepipe.

NBC Sports Group acquired sports software company Sport Ngin. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. 

Sport Ngin has been renamed SportsEngine, and will remain in operation. 

Founded in 2008, SportsEngine has 500,000 sports teams, leagues, clubs, and associations as customers. It had raised $39.13 million in venture funding from Causeway Media Partners, El Dorado Ventures, Piper Jaffray, Rally Ventures, Taylor and Univision.

Helios and Matheson Analytics, a provider of integrated Big Data technology, analytics and data visualization solutions, merged with Zone Technologies, creator of RedZone Maps, a crime and navigation map application. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

With the new partnership, Helios and Matheson plans to leverage its artificial intelligence capabilities and deep learning and analytics expertise to enable RedZone Maps to further expand its crime mapping capabilities globally.

The pending merger is subject to approval by the NASDAQ Stock Market, among other customary closing conditions.

Blackbaud, a provider of software and services for the global philanthropic community, acquired Attentive.ly, a software provider that allows organizations to conduct social listening, identify key influencers and drive engagement. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Rosalyn Lemieux, co-founder and CEO of Attentive.ly, along with the company’s 10 employees will join Blackbaud effective immediately, reporting up through Kevin McDearis’ Research, Delivery and Operations Group. Co-founder Cheryl Contee will serve as strategic adviser to Blackbaud as she continues to lead consulting firm, Fission Strategy.

Attentive.ly already integrates with Blackbaud’s digital marketing solution, Luminate OnlineTM, and Blackbaud plans to more deeply integrate Attentive.ly’s capabilities into the next generation version of Luminate Online and intends to pursue other opportunities to leverage functionality across its broader portfolio over time. Once deeply integrated, Attentive.ly will activate an advanced level of social listening for Blackbaud customers; helping them organically grow campaigns while providing a new level of service and community to supporters.

Blackbaud will continue to support current Attentive.ly customers who are using the platform as a stand-alone product, and will also continue to support current third-party integrations.

Founded in 2012, Attentive.ly had raised $1.38 million in venture funding.

Time Inc. UK acquired Collective UK, a provider of premium digital creative advertising solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Collective UK will continue to operate from its offices in Great Marlborough Street.

With clients including Microsoft, O2, Sky, Unilever, Disney and eBay, Collective UK specialises in creating, delivering and optimising unique digital solutions and brand campaigns for their clients across display, video and branded content, and on all digital devices.

TrustYou, a guest feedback platform, acquired real-time messaging specialist Checkmate. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition will enhance TrustYou's platform to incorporate real-time guest feedback.

It will allow hotels to actively engage guests before they arrive and while they are on-site in real-time through SMS, email, and even Facebook messaging. For hoteliers, this drives engagement and allows hotels to always be informed about their guests’ experiences.

DOAR, a litigation strategy and expert consulting company, acquired Expert Search Group, an expert witness referral company. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Expert Search Group will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of DOAR.  Cynthia Scheltema, one of ESG's founders, will continue to oversee ESG's operations and will join DOAR as its Affiliate Manager, responsible for managing the company's affiliation with industry and subject-matter experts who work in conjunction with DOAR's litigation strategy consulting teams.

The acquisition closed on July 1, 2016.

Mi9 Retail, a provider of unified commerce solutions for the retail industry, acquired Upshot Commerce, a provider of on-demand, omni-channel e-commerce and order management solutions. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The acquisition of Upshot Commerce adds proven order management and e-commerce solutions to the Mi9 Retail platform, providing a one-stop shop for retailers who want to deliver a fully integrated, omni-channel shopping experience to their customers.

Founded in 1994, Upshot Commerce has processed over $1 billion in sales.

Infor, a provider of business applications specialized by industry and built for the cloud, entered into an agreement to acquire Starmount, a store systems provider serving large and mid-market retailers. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

When the acquisition is complete, Starmount will provide point-of-sale, mobile shopping assistant, and store inventory management products along with a data-rich commerce hub to engage shoppers, streamline operations, and support consistent cross-channel customer interactions.

The acquisition is expected to enable Infor to accelerate delivery of Infor CloudSuite Retail, a suite of enterprise applications delivered in the cloud.

Founded in 2006, Starmount had raised $13 million in venture funding from Kayne Partners.

The deal is expected to close within 30 days.

LifeLogger Technologies, a platform for capturing and sharing location smart videos, completed its acquisition of key assets of Pixorial, a cloud-based consumer platform for storing, sharing and creating videos. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

Acquired assets include the registered trademark “What’s Your Story?” and Pixorial's 620,000 customer list.

LifeLogger will issue 2,600,200 shares of its unregistered common stock to the existing shareholders and certain creditors of Pixorial. In addition, LifeLogger amended the exercise price of Pixorial CEO Andres Espineira’s stock option award to $.10 per share.

Enterprise software company Atlassian acquired status and incident communication platform StatusPage. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

The StatusPage team is coming to work to Atlassian, which also will continue to offer StatusPage as a standalone service.

Founded in 2013, StatusPage was had thousands of customers including Intercom, Venmo, New Relic, Intuit and Citrix. The company had raised $100,000 in venture funding.

Gambling technology company Playtech acquired software provider Best Gaming Technology. The price was 138 million euros ($152.6 million).

 With this acquisition, Playtech will strengthen its position in the sports-betting market, especially in the U.K., Spain and Italy.

As part of the acquisition, Armin Sageder, Chief Executive Officer of BGT, will continue to hold his position for at least three years, together with retaining 10% of the business. All members of the existing BGT Management team, including John Pettit (MD – UK & Ireland), Markus Hütter (Chief Technical Officer) and Dietmar Wiesinger (Chief Operations Officer) are also committed to staying with the business for the same 3 year period.

Furthermore the BGT Offices in Vienna, London and Bremen will remain and continue to operate as normal.

AppPoint Software Solutions, a provider of enterprise business application infrastructure, acquired campus recruiting software company HireCanvas. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

AppPoint made the acquisition to assist its customers with their talent acquisition and management challenges. It will used the HireCanvas technology and team to complement and accelerate its efforts to deliver quality solutions addressing end-to-end needs of our customers.

Founded in 2014, HireCanvas had raised $58,000 in venture funding from AngelPad.

RealD, a licensor of 3D and other visual technologies, acquired Tessive, a motion image processing company. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

RealD will use Tessive's proprietary software to launch RealD TrueMotion, a new production tool with the ability to correct imperfections in motion capture, including the "wagon wheel effect" and motion choppiness known as "judder". 

As part of the acquisition, Tessive founder Tony Davis will join RealD as a Senior Scientist working in the company's Research and Development division. Davis will continue to lead development of the software for a wide variety of potential uses including HDR and VR.

Seamless Distribution, a mobile payments solution, acquired MeaWallet, a provider of Cloud-Based Payments as a service. The purchase price amounts to approximately SEK 42,8 million ($5 million) and payment is made through an issue in kind of 4,574,328 new shares in Seamless.

Through the acquisition of MeaWallet, Seamless acquires important technology for the SEQR business. At the same time the acquisition opens a new business area for Seamless where the technology can be sold to institutions who want to establish themselves within the field of mobile payments.

Founded in 2012, MeaWallet had raised $8.87 million in venture funding.

Ticketing software startup Vendini acquired ticketing marketplace CHARGED.fm. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed. 

(Image source: socialventurepartners.org)