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- Climb's M&A Weekly: Salesforce, Vista and Revelstoke Capital Partners all feature
Climb's M&A Weekly: Salesforce, Vista and Revelstoke Capital Partners all feature
Vista backed Granicus continues to build their customer engagement platform for the public sector and Salesforce stars acquiring again
Nick @ Climb
September 08, 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.
Vista Equity Partners backed Granicus acquires Simpleview
Overview: Granicus has grown into a global leader in customer engagement and experience technology for the public sector since Vista acquired the company in 2016 and merged it with GovDelivery. This strategic acquisition sees them add Simpleview and their set of destination marketing software to their platform. Simpleview currently provides CRM, CMS, website design and digital marketing solutions to over 1000 destinations worldwide, ranging from small towns to capital cities. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Granicus deepens their govtech investments with an acquistion into a unique niche, Chamber of Commerce/destination marketing. Vertical CRMs tend to be attractive for PE backed buyers due to the sticky nature of the product & cross-sell opportunities. With this acquisition Granicus will serve more than 7,000 organizations worldwide.
Salesforce starts acquiring again with deals for Own and Tenyx
Overview: Having paused acquisitions amidst pressure from activist investors, Salesforce is back on the M&A trail. Their acquisition of Tenyx, a developer of AI powered voice agents, will help the acquirer improve customer service by delivering more engaging and natural conversations. This deal also has an AI talent-add aspect to it, with Tenyx’s co-founders and team joining Salesforce post close. Read more here. Later in the week, they also announced acquisition of Own for $1.9BN in cash - their biggest acquisition since Slack in 2021. More here.
Climb Comment: Good to see Salesforce active again with two deal announcements. For Tenyx deal, AI is once again the story, specifically voice-based agents. The data that flows through customer communications calls is invaluable and Salesforce will likely use it in a two-way fashion — enriching AI agents with CRM data & enriching customer data profiles via voice records.
Climb advised on a deal in this space recently & we look forward to announcing details in the near future - stay tuned & please reach out if you’re looking to buy or sell in the call center space.
Revelstoke Capital Partners make significant investment in MediQuant
Overview: Healthcare focused PE firm Revelstoke has announced a major investment in MediQuant, a provider of data archiving and interoperability solutions for hospitals and health systems. The Ohio based company helps health organizations maintain access to clinical, financial and administrative data that is needed to treat patients and stay compliant with regulations. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Revelstoke is a leader in middle market healthtech PE, with almost 200 completed acquisitions since 2013 and approximately $5B AUM. MediQuant is focused on making it easy and intuitive for healthcare workers to access patient data across disparate systems including clinical, financial, and administrative. MediQuant serves more than 1,000 hospitals & physician practices today and will look to grow that base on back of Revelstoke’s investment.
L2L announces deal for SwipeGuide
Overview: L2L provides a connected workforce platform to manufacturing operations, helping workers collaborate and improve productivity. This deal sees them add a powerful tool to the platform in the form of SwipeGuide’s mobile app for training and upskilling frontline workers. The app uses visual aids to help simplify complex training processes and has been used by over 300K factory workers across 93 countries. Read more here.
Climb Comment: M33 backed L2L drive smart manufacturing through a suite of maintenance, safety, productivity, and other digital shop floor technologies and here they invest further in the frontline by acquiring SwipeGuide.
SwipeGuide has created a mobile-forward training platform that enables workers & supervisors to quickly create best practice SOPs, job aids, and training videos, codifying tribal knowledge in a manufacturing environment.
Susquehanna Growth Equity backed Muck Rack acquire Keyhole
Overview: PR and communications management software company Muck Rack has acquired Keyhole. Based in Toronto, Keyhole provides a social listening and analytics platform for gaining real-time insights on social media data. The two companies have been partners since 2023 but this announcement will see Muck Rack integrate Keyhole’s tools into their platform, as the Miami based acquirer aims to help clients see how their brand is perceived across social media. Read more here.
Climb Comment: Muck Rack leans into ‘social listening’, the practice of monitoring keywords & brand mentions across platforms, with this deal. Muck Rack took investment of $180m in 2022 and this marks their first acquisition. Keyhole has created outsized value for a team of 19 (per LinkedIn) - with top Gartner reviews in the social media analytics category and a customer roster of more than 100,000 agencies, brands, and non-profits. Muck Rack will integrate Keyhole immediately and we’d expect to see deeper collaboration over the long term.
Article of the week
This week’s article featured heavily in online conversation this week & comes from YC founder Paul Graham. He discusses the difference between ‘manager mode’ and ‘founder mode’, exploring the latter in more detail.
Read the full article here. Dave Kellogg also shared a thought-provoking response to the post - both worth checking out.
Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.
All the best,
Nick