Thursday, April 17, 2014

Dropbox Acquires Startups Loom, Hackpad in Push to Expand Services - Wall Street Journal

Amid a push to expand its services, Dropbox Inc. has acquired a pair of startups: photo-sharing company Loom Inc. and document-sharing startup Hackpad Inc.

Dropbox has quietly been making small acquisitions since 2012 and appears to be ramping up its pace, buying two companies in 2012, four last year, and at least four so far this year.

Venture-backed Loom said it will shut down its service and roll it into Dropbox's recently released cloud-based storage service Carousel. The San Francisco-based company said existing users have until May 16 to export their data.

Loom launched its paid photo service in October 2013 with $1.4 million in backing from investors including Google Ventures, Chinese Internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd., Great Oaks Venture Capital, Overbrook Entertainment and individuals.

Loom was co-founded as Popset by Philipp Wein and Daniel Wagner at Y Combinator in 2012. The startup's photo service uploaded full-resolution images from mobile devices and created lower-resolution images that could be accessed from the phone or tablet, freeing up space.

San Francisco-based Hackpad will continue to operate, the company said in a blog post about the acquisition. The service enables users to collaborate and share documents.

Terms of the deals weren't disclosed by the companies.

San Francisco-based Dropbox raised $350 million earlier this year from investors including BlackRock, T. Rowe Price and Morgan Stanley Investment Management in a funding round that valued that the six-year-old startup at $10 billion.

Accel Partners, Benchmark, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, Institutional Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital are also among its investors.

The company released a suite of new apps earlier this month as part of a push to offer a wider range of services than storing and sharing files.

Here's a list of previous Dropbox acquisitions, courtesy of Dow Jones VentureSource and media reports:

  • Tapengage, July 2012, San Francisco-based advertising/marketing company       
  • Snapjoy, December 2012, Boulder, Colo.-based multimedia/streaming software company
  • Orchestra, March 2013, Palo Alto, Calif.-based email/messaging company
  • Endorse, July 2013, San Mateo, Calif.-based shopping facilitators company
  • Terrarium, November 2013, Boston-based shopping facilitors company
  • PiCloud, November 2013, San Francisco-based software development tools company
  • Readmill Network, March 2014, Berlin-based e-reading app company
  • Zulip, March 2014, Cambridge, Mass.-based workplace chat tool (earlier reported by TechCrunch)

Write to Mike Billings at mike.billings@wsj.com. Follow him on Twitter at @mbillings

Source : http://stream.wsj.com/story/latest-headlines/SS-2-63399/SS-2-511002/