One of the measures of a tech business community’s health is its list of recent acquisitions.
Is the ecosystem growing businesses that are attracting the interest of larger companies?
For the District, some of its biggest acquisitions have come recently. It’s a city where still more than a quarter of its residents work for the federal government but greater familiarity is coming to its flourishing tech scene. There are few clearer measures of that momentum than the recent big tech exits that have happened in and around D.C., the city with the second highest tech job growth in 2013.
While tech exits in Delaware have the slower pace of biotech and Philadelphia has a long history of big-name buyers for enterprise solutions that come around less regularly, acquisitions from D.C. have come fast and furious in the last two years.
This list isn’t exhaustive, but it gives some insight into the appeal of D.C.’s tech market. If we missed something, remind us in the comments.
1. Speek acquired by Jive Communications (July 2015)
- Speek aimed to make conference calls as simple as possible and the Dulles-based startup secured over $5 million in Series A funding. With a “no PINs, no downloads, and no hassle” approach, Speek was a prime acquisition for Jive Communications. The terms of the acquisition was not disclosed but it came after a few tumultuous months for the startup.
2. Virtustream acquired by EMC Corporation (May 2015)
- Virtustream, an enterprise-class cloud software company based in Bethesda, was purchased in an all-cash transaction worth $1.2 billion by EMC. This purchase followed three others by the information technology company, all aimed at expanding its cloud computing services. On Oct. 12, in what looks to be one of the biggest tech deals yet, Dell announced plans to buy EMC for $67 billion.
3. Applied Predictive Technologies acquired by MasterCard (April 2015)
- The credit card company purchased the Arlington analytics provider for $600 million. The deal closed in the second quarter of 2015 and followed MasterCard’s other recent purchase of the London-based analytics company 5one. In 2012, Applied Predictive Technologies received a $100 million investment from Goldman Sachs.
4. FoundationDB acquired by Apple (March 2015)
- FoundationDB, a D.C. tech scene darling, was acquired by Apple last March for an undisclosed amount. The NoSQL database company shut down all downloads after the buy and closed their GitHub page, causing some backlash. In 2009, FoundationDB was founded on $1 million in seed money and eventually raised a total of $22.7 million.
5. HelloWallet acquired by Morningstar (May 2014)
- HelloWallet, the personal money managing app, was purchased by the investment research company Morningstar in 2014. Having already previously invested $13.5 million in the startup, Morningstar paid $39 million, bringing the total price tag to $52.5 million. HelloWallet had about 50 employees in D.C. and 350,000 subscriptions as of 2012.
6. Parature acquired by Microsoft (January 2014)
- Microsoft acquired Parature to “add world-class customer self-service capabilities to further accelerate the Microsoft Dynamics vision of helping organizations deliver amazing customer experiences,” according to Microsoft a statement at the time. The purchase price came in at $100 million and followed a previous 2009 partnership the company had with Microsoft.
