appRenaissance announces acqui-hire of DreamIT grad UXFlip, founder Michael Raber

Continuing the noise out of Old City mobile development shop appRenaissance, the firm announced this morning the acquisition of UXFLIP and the retention of its founder Michael Raber.

Officially, the deal closed yesterday, April 23, according to a press release.

UXFLIP, a fall 2011 DreamIt Ventures incubation class member and winner of February’s Phorum cloud conference Demo Pit, is a cloud-based platform to build and maintain native mobile app user interfaces.

More simply: if you’re making an app and need a place online to develop, store and access its front end, here’s the technology you can use.

“The capabilities of UXFLIP are highly complementary to our middleware platform and Michael will be an awesome addition to the team,” said appRenaissance CEO Bob Moul in a release.

Moul, who joined appRenaissance in February following a public leap to lead Philly Startup Leaders and an exit with Boomi, mentored Raber as part of his DreamIt class. Moul also helped organize the Phorum effort, so there was no shortage of formal relationship building there.

Part of a recent fundraising round for the company went to the acquisition, confirmed Moul. UXFlip had no other full-time staff. With Raber, appRenaissance has “11 permanent employees, from four two months ago,” added Moul.