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- Climb's M&A Weekly: Deals by Planoly, Thunes and Finsight
Climb's M&A Weekly: Deals by Planoly, Thunes and Finsight
Planoly adds tools to help creators monetize and Thunes expands in the US and online gaming market
Nick @ Climb
April 28, 2024
Welcome to Climb Advisor’s weekly deal newsletter highlighting transactions announced last week across the B2B tech landscape.
Climb Advisors is an M&A and credit advisory firm focused on B2B software and services companies in the range of $5m to $100m+ enterprise value. We guide CEOs and business owners through the process of selling their business & assist investors in sourcing & closing great deals. We love to talk markets and share beneficial information - please reach out any time.
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ASG backed Planoly acquires Snipfeed
Overview: Austin-based Planoly, provider of a social media management platform for creators and small businesses, has acquired Snipfeed to help their clients monetize their accounts. Snipfeed’s tools allow creators to build storefronts directly on their profiles, helping them sell products, services, manage customer relationships and track sales performance. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Strategic deal here in what has historically been a tough market. Software aimed at solopreneurs and SMBs faces higher churn & higher CAC vs more mid-market plays, and marketing software (esp social media focused) across the stack faces challenges of higher churn vs more mission-critical solutions.
That said — there is no ignoring the massive impact of social media on marketing today and the need & opportunity to leverage it for commerce. Planoly takes a platform approach, aiming to provide one-stop management of a social program. Here they add capabilities to build creator storefronts & templatized digital products. Interesting to note Planoly will no longer collect a transaction fee on sales via Snipfeed. Detailed write-up from CEO here.
Singapore based Thunes adds Tilia to expand US footprint
Overview: Global cross-border payments company Thunes is acquiring Tilia, a payments platform tailored to the needs of the online gaming sector, that has raised over $20M from investors such as JP Morgan. Tilia will be rebranded as Thunes post acquisition but will continue to operate from its headquarters in San Francisco, with this move expanding the acquirer’s presence in both the US and a rapidly growing online gaming market. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Thunes operates a global network that connects billions of bank accounts & alternative payment, enabling merchants to send and receive funds worldwide. Here they make a strong move into the highly regulated (and lucrative) US market with the acquisition of Tilia, licensed in 48 US states and territories. Tilia has made their foothold in the ecosystem of online gaming - creating a platform for real-time transfer of real-world funds into a virtual environment - one of the current frontiers of fintech.
Finsight adds T-REX to strengthen their presence in global private credit
Overview: Finsight’s software helps investors, investment banks and corporations streamline workflows, and gain visibility and actionable insights into fixed income and equity primary capital markets. This deal sees them add T-REX's cloud-native platform which models and manages investments across private credit, structured credit and private finance. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Finsight serves as a leading market data source in the fixed income market and also provides a range of ancillary services to bankers & financial professionals including virtual roadshows, VDRs, conference calls & more. T-REX has built a platform that streamlines complex asset-backed securitization, ingesting massive volumes of data across numerous systems and creating detailed models, risk scenarios & more. Strong technical add here for Finsight & will no doubt increase their market share among institutional lenders.
Titan Cloud acquires Truefill and their fuel supply management software
Overview: Titan Cloud provides a fuel optimization platform which helps clients decrease fuel supply, logistics costs, maintenance costs and environmental compliance risk. The acquisition of Truefill aims to integrate added fuel supply chain capabilities to the platform by helping suppliers and carriers track, forecast and negotiate fuel orders, manage dispatch logistics and synchronize invoicing. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Charlsebank-backed Titan Cloud provides end-to-end fuel asset optimization for C-stores & gas stations and the carriers that serve them, aiming to reduce fleet downtime, supply outages, retail theft/loss & more. With their acquisition of Truefill they push further into the supply side of the chain, leveraging Truefill’s capabilities around contract pricing optimization and single-panel truck dispatch. Strong combination here further cementing Titan Cloud as a leader in the space.
Awning.com acquired by RedAwning to fuel strategic expansion
Overview: Awning.com, a full service management platform for vacation rentals, has been bought by RedAwning. Based in California, RedAwning provides a wide range of marketing and hospitality tools for short term lodgings to help clients boost ROI and customer satisfaction. This highly strategic deal sees the companies merge complementary solutions, client bases and teams within the North American vacation rental industry. Read more here.
Climb Comment: RedAwning acts as a distribution channel for short-term rental owners, using dynamic pricing engines etc to list properties at the highest rates & maximizing occupancy. Here they add a very complementary tool to the kit in Awning.com - a data platform estimating Airbnb revenue at millions of addresses as well as a property management platform & a listing brokerage focused on the short term rental market. The addition of these tools as well as the Awning.com team & network surely spells good things for RedAwning and their clientele.
Article of the week
This week’s post is an overview of the vertical SaaS opportunity from a first check VC’s perspective. Given we are all so familiar with the space, we sometimes forget just how big the future opportunity is here.
Also, they tease a future post around vertical data moats which they believe vertical SaaS businesses - as owners of key proprietary training data - will own some of AI’s most powerful, value-generating B2B applications of the next decade. We’ll be sure to share that too.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.
All the best,
Nick