April SMB Software News Recap
Eeach month, we report on what made news for the companies we track in the SurePath SMB Index — a basket of 35 publicly traded software and technology companies that serve the SMB market. Check out last month’s post here. Here is what made news this month:
Acquisitions This Month:
- Yelp acquired Turnstyle, a Canadian company that provides customer analytics and location-based marketing solutions for brick-and-mortar retail stores. See our report on Yelp as an acquirer here
- Zendesk acquired Outbound.io, which helps businesses automate and optimize email, push, SMS and web messages.
- Square acquired Yik Yak’s engineering team for less than $3M. The once hot messenger app notably raised over $75M from Sequoia in 2014, but this proves once again the gods of tech are a fickle bunch.
New Product Launches This Month:
- Xero and Paypal partner to provide small business bundles as a Business in a Box, helping new online businesses launch and manage their websites, manage finances and accept payments
- Shutterstock launches new project management tool for creatives. Dubbed Workstream™, the solution is geared towards enterprise marketing and creative teams to track workflow
- Wix launches new video capabilities, allowing users to integrate all video content into one player on the Wix website, regardless of source or host of the video
- Zendesk launches Guide, a two part solution that tracks customer interactions to build up enterprise knowledge base, and utilize that knowledge to enable automated answers via AI
- Marchex launches a new Speech Analytics Program, which allows call centres to track lost opportunities, high intent calls, agent script tracking, and searchable transcripts
- Intuit launches new expense management tool for freelancers, allowing them to track personal vs. business expenses. The app will learn the habits of the individual, and through machine learning will automatically suggest whether a line item is personal or business expense. This product comes from their acquisition of Good April in 2013.
- HubSpot and Shakr partner to launch video content builder on StoriesAds.com, which will become a platform for creating compelling video content tailored for Instagram’s vertical format
Angie’s List Combines with IAC’s HomeAdvisor
We’ve tracked Angie’s list’s struggles for the past year, looking at its shift to a freemium model and taking down its paywalls on reviews. The company announced on May 1st it will merge with IAC’s HomeAdvisor, which valued Angie’s List at $500M, a far cry from its secondary public offering valuation of $860M in 2012.
Shopify Launches New Chip & Swipe Readers
Shopify has launched its new wireless card reader for its POS system. Existing POS customers will pay $29 for the reader, and it will be free for new customers.
EIGI Announces CEO Transition Plan
Hari Ravichandran, founder and CEO of Endurance International, is working with the board to find a new CEO. Mr. Ravichandran founded the firm 20 years ago, and was the one to take it public.
Groupon Sinking More Than Swimming
Groupon announced Q1 2017 results, showing the company’s revenue declined 4% YoY. While the company is trying to turn around the ship by focusing on the customer experience — it’s still questionable whether it’s not too little, too late.
GrubHub Serving Up Real Grub
GrubHub announced extremely positive Q1 2017 results, with revenues up 39% YoY. While delivery networks like UberEats, Foodora, Caviar, and others are struggling to compete with each other, it’s clear to see that Grubhub is happily chugging along, creating returns for its shareholders.
Trump’s Tax Plan Affects H&R Block
US President Donald Trump has rarely been associated with good news recently, and even less so for the shareholders of H&R Block, who saw the stock sink after the President announced tax plan changes to simplify the tax reporting process.
LendingTree Growing Quickly
LendingTree’s Q1 earnings came as a positive boon for the stock, after announcing revenues going up 40% YoY, and non-mortgage revenues up 75% YoY.
Sage Firms Up On Selling US Payments Arm
We reported in December 2016 that Sage is looking for strategic exits for its US Payments Unit, and now it’s been confirmed that it now has a giant for-sale sign.
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