In the early part of this decade, acquihires were all the rage, though the pace has slowed in the last couple years, they are still a big part of many companys' strategic playbooks.
Acquihires are deals where a buyer is largely focused on getting a startup's team and less focused on their specific products or business.
Companies like Facebook and Google have gobbled up startups to get the best engineers and founders onto their staff. In 2013 alone Yahoo picked up 23 teams!
Yahoo may have slowed down their pace since the Verizon acquisition. But these deals are still happening.
Here are some recent high profile deals which seem to have been largely acquihires:
Startup: Init.ai
Description: "Init.ai is a developer platform that enables its users to design and develop language conversational mobile applications"
Team members: Six, including co-founders Keith Brisson, Will Dawoodi, Kyle DeTella and Trevor McNaughton
Funding: Undisclosed
Investors: Techstars, Esther Dyson, Jim Young, Valence Ventures, Danmar Capital, Boldstart Ventures
Deal date: October, 2017
Startup: Swipe Labs
Description: "Swipe allows the users to see the photos and videos of their friends that is not posted on Facebook"
Team members: Co-founder Marwan Roushdy
Funding: $8.2 million
Investors: Lowercase Capital, Slow Ventures, First Round Capital, Binary Capital, Sherpa Capital, Amasia, Khosla Ventures, Greylock Partners, SV Angel
Deal date: July, 2017
Startup: Flite
Description: "Flite offers a programmatic creative platform to empower professional advertisers to deliver HTML5 ads that live up to the expectations of today's consumers"
Team members: Not disclosed
Funding: $55.5 million
Investors: Iris Capital, VivaKi, HWVP, Sequoia Capital, General Catalyst, Harrison Metal, Northgate Capital
Deal date: December, 2016
Startup: Memo.ai
Description: "Memo.AI creates a Slackbot for helping technical teams manage notes and instructions"
Team members: Co-founders Mircea Pașoi, Cristian Strat, Liana Dumitru
Funding: None
Investors: None
Deal date: January, 2018
Startup: Final
Description: "Final is issuing a credit card that gives consumers total control over their merchant relationships"
Team members: A dozen engineers and product managers
Funding: $4.1 million
Investors: DRW Venture Capital, Zillionize Angel, 1776 Ventures, Kima Ventures, Ludlow Ventures, KPCB Edge, Runa Capital, T5 Capital, Canyon Creek Capital, Wei Guo, Y Combinator, Dr. E. Bora Uygun, Right Side Capital Management
Deal date: January, 2018
Startup: ChangeCoin
Description: "ChangeCoin is a micropayment infrastructure for the Internet"
Team members: Seven engineers
Funding: $4.3 nillion
Investors: Pantera Capital, Winklevoss Capital, Plug and Play, Transmedia Capital, Boldstart Ventures, Digital Currency Group, 500 Startups, Daniel Curran, Blockchain Capital, Idealab, Upslope Ventures, Ben Davenport
Deal date: April, 2016
Startup: DataScore
Description: "DataScore is a predictive analytics platform for data-driven marketers"
Team members: Co-founders Monica Ohara, Ismail Coskuner, and Hannah Russin
Funding: None
Investors: None
Deal date: August, 2017
(Image source: socialventurepartners.org)
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