Pulse2 Technology and Social Media News » Summit Partners

AFCV Holdings Acquires Answers.com For $127 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 22:22:18 +0000

Answers.com has been acquired for $127 million in cash ($10.50 per share) by AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company owned by Summit Partners. AFCV is delisting Answers.com from the NASDAQ and is taking the company private.

Answers.com is a Q&A website that has over 5.5 million registered users. They recently hit their 10 millionth answer and launched an iPhone application. The company also started including video answers powered by 5min.com.

“After an exciting six years as a public company, we are very pleased to achieve considerable value for our investors. This agreement is also a positive for our community members. The integrity and commitment of our company to our products remain unchanged, as we continue our mission of creating the ultimate destination for answers,” stated Answers.com Founder, Chairman, and CEO Bob Rosenschein. Answers.com is the second largest Q&A website in the world.

Social Media Marketing Company Wildfire Raises $4 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 16:15:36 +0000

Wildfire is a social media marketing platform company that is known for building viral campaigns. The company has raised $4 million in Series A funding from Summit Partners, Jeff Clavier, Aydin Senkut, and Gary Vaynerchuk. Wildfire’s platform lets marketers created contests, coupons, quizzes, virtual gifts, etc. Marketers can simultaneously publish these on Facebook and Twitter. Wildfire is a fbFund company. The company went profitable within one month of launching. [TechCrunch]

Google Acquiring Communication Security Company, Postini Inc. For $625 Million

Amit Chowdhry — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 01:19:14 +0000

Google Inc. [a.k.a. Earchsay Engineway Uggernautjay (Pig Latin for "search engine juggernaut")] will be acquiring web communication security company, Postini Inc.Â The amount paid for the company is $625 million.

Postini’s services will be a valuable add-on for Google Apps.Â As 1,000 small businesses are signing up for Google Apps per day, Postini will most likely be used to protect the information transferring between these businesses.

“Larger enterprises, however, face a challenge: though they want to deliver simple, useful hosted applications to their employees, they’re also required to support complex business rules, information security mandates, and an array of legal and corporate compliance issues. In effect, many businesses use legacy systems not because they are the best for their users, but because they are able to support complex business rules. This isn’t a tradeoff that any business should have to make,” stated Dave Girouard, VP & GM of Google Enterprise on the official Google Blog.

“We realized that we needed a more complete way to address these information security and compliance issues in order to better support the enterprise community. That’s why we’re excited to share the news that we’ve agreed to acquire Postini.”

Postini is a private, San Carlos, Calif.-based company.Â August Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Mobius Venture Capital, Pacifica Fund, Summit Partners and Sun Microsystems Inc. are all investors in Postini who will potentially see a nice return on investment.

Postini intends on using Google technologies to develop a new suite of products.Â The synergy created through this acquisition also aligns Google’s partnership with Salesforce.com.

References:
[1]Â Reuters: Google to buy Web security co Postini for $625 mln (via Yahoo! News)
[2] The Official Google Blog: Welcome, Postini team
[3] Pulse 2.0: Google AdWords Officially Merging Into Salesforce.com Apps