Austin Weekly Deal Highlights for September 23, 2018

From: “Mason Rathe” <[email protected]> on behalf of “Mason Rathe” <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, 23 September 2018 23:44
To: [email protected]
Subject:Austin Weekly Deal Highlights 9-23-18

Austin Weekly Deal Highlights

By Mason Rathe – September 23, 2018

Subscribe to this Newsletter

• Share
• Tweet
• Forward
• Share

$3B in 2 years?! That’s the amount of value created by Austin-based private equity firm Vista Equity Partners, who is selling their portfolio company Marketo to Adobe for a colossal $4.75B, after paying $1.8B in 2016. Vista raised eyebrows by paying a 64% premium to take Marketo private in 2016, but with an outcome like this, there is no shortage of egg on the faces of their doubters.

Austin Financing Activity

• Bungalo, an online homebuying platform, emerged from stealth mode with $250M in funding and a commitment for $1B in additional backing from Austin’s Amherst Holdings. The new money will help the company buy and renovate approx. 155 homes in their first 2 markets, Dallas and Tampa.
• Good Money Group, a startup consumerizing cryptocurrency, raised $22M in debt and other options. Its listed director, Gunnar Lovelace, is the co-founder of Los Angeles-based Thrive Market.
• Cherry Circle Software, developer of a healthcare performance system, raised $500k of convertible debt funding from undisclosed investors, according to Pitchbook.

Austin M&A Activity

• Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) agreed to buy Marketo, a San Mateo, Calif.-based maker of marketing automation software, from Austinbased Vista Equity Partners for $4.75B. Vista paid $1.8B to take Marketo private in 2016, representing a 64% premium to the company’s share price at the time.
• Drillinginfo, which was acquired by Genstar Capital in June, acquired Oildex, a Denver-based oil and gas financial automation software. Financial terms weren’t disclosed. Oildex is a portfolio company of Accel-KKR.
• Orchard & Grove was acquired by Jamf, an enterprise IT company. Austin-based Orchard & Grove is the creator of Nomad, a provider of management software for Apple administrators. Last October, Jamf sold a majority stake in the company to Vista Equity Partners.

Other Relevant Deal Activity

• Silverton Partners participated in the $8M Series A for Apprentice.io, a New Jersey-based conversational augmented reality and artificial intelligence platform. Pritzker Group Venture Capital led the round.
• Infrastructure Networks, a Houston-based provider of a wireless-infrastructure-as-a-service platform, raised $4.5 million of venture funding from Texas Ventures, Capital for Founders and Apollo Global Management.
• Post Acute Analytics, a Lewisville, Texas-based health tech company focused on total quality and cost of care, raised $3.67M from undisclosed investors.
• Dispatch, a Boston-based logistics company, raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Austin-based Vista Equity Partners.

Austin People

• Cognitive computing analytics company SparkCognition hired former Verizon Ventures director Vijay Doradla as Chief Business Officer. SparkCognition has raised over $70M to date.
• RVshare, an RV rental marketplace based in Austin and Akron, Ohio, added former HomeAway executive Melissa Fortenberry as its VP of product and former Postmates executive Martijn Scheijbeler as VP of marketing. RVshare received a $50M commitment from Austin based Tritium Partners in February.
• Kony, a digital banking software company, appointed Jeffery Kendall SVP and general manager of Kony DBX, a financial services arm of the company. Kony also appointed Miljan Stamenkovic as its regional VP of Europe for banking and financial services. Before Kony, Stamenkovic worked at Backbase. Kony has raised over $160M to date.

Austin News

• Austin Inno’s 25 Under 25
• The University of Texas Investment Management Co., which manages money for the University of Texas and Texas A&M University, posted double-digit endowment gains as the assets it oversees reached $32.2B.
• University of Texas Among Schools Producing the Most Startup Founders
• Graham Weston, one of the co-founders of Rackspace and Geekdom, donated $15M to the University of Texas at San Antonio to establish a School of Data Science and a National Security Collaboration Center downtown.
• Austin area’s GDP rose faster in 2017 than all other major metros. Austin is 24th in new ranking of economic powerhouses
• The Texas State Securities Board announced new cease and desist orders at crypto companies that are targeting Texas investors.
• Here’s what Dell’s venture capital arm means for Austin
• University of Texas’s new entrepreneurship minor boosts Austin’s startup scene
• Sputnik ATX launched Texas Startup Bible, which is free online platform full of startup-related content that is curated by the Sputnik team.
• Texas Central secures loan of up to $300M for bullet train. They will start on permitting and engineering in order to start construction on the Houston-Dallas train next year.
• The booming e-scooter market just Reported its first fatality, which occurred earlier this month in Dallas, when the rider was not wearing a helmet.
• Toronto-based product information management software provider Jasper PIM, has opened its U.S. headquarters in Austin.

Upcoming Events

• September 25th, Austin Fast Start Pitch Competition
• October 1st, Women in Tech Summit
• October 1-5th, Austin Startup Week
• October 4th, ATX Startup Crawl
• October 11th, Austin Inno’s 50 on Fire 2018

LiveOak Venture Partners

Think you might be a fit for LiveOak, if I missed a deal, or have feedback, you can reach me at [email protected] If your company is recruiting for a senior level position, happy to include a shout-out.

View on Web | Subscribe to this Newsletter
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.