March SMB Software News Recap
Every 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 last month:
Acquisitions This Month:
- First Data Corporation acquired Acculynk to add online debit e-commerce capabilities
- GoDaddy acquired Sucuri, a leading security tool for Wordpress
- Mindbody acquired Lymber Wellness, a dynamic pricing engine for class providers based on supply and demand
- Sage acquired Fairsail, a mid-market HR information system provider that generated $12.5M in revenue in 2016
- Sage acquired Compass, an analytics and benchmarking platform
- Yelp acquired Nowait, a restaurant discovery platform, for $40M USD
Groupon Continues Trimming Fat
The company sold off its Israeli arm to Sky Fund, a private equity company. While the company still retains its branding and part ownership, it sold off ~50% of the business. Groupon originally expanded into Israel through a $9M acquisition of Grouper — a copycat company that owned the market back in 2011.
The company also laid off the remaining LivingSocial staffers and shuttered its DC office. While Groupon’s actions this month are in line with expectations after announcements of massive pull back of international operations, it still leaves us wondering if it’s a little too late.
Carbonite Announces Private Offering of $125M in Convertible Notes
The data protection provider announced that it was issuing $125M in senior convertible notes. The company will use $40M to pay off existing debt, and to fund potential future acquisitions.
Xero Just Added An Extra Zero To Its Subscriber Count
Xero celebrates reaching one million subscribers on its tenth year of operating. The company has taken off significantly in the past year, signing on 300,000 subscribers. This milestone is particularly impressive for a company from New Zealand taking on big competitors like Sage and Intuit.
India Rising
Godaddy and Endurance International’s Constant Contact both launched new products this month in India. GoDaddy launched a website builder for SMBs in India. Constant Contact also launched a dedicated Indian website and launched its email services for SMBs in the country. Meanwhile, the head of Zendesk India announced that they are open for acquisition opportunities.
Brexit Hasn’t Hampered SMB Expansion
Xero and Square both expanded their footprint in the UK this past month. Xero, the New Zealand HR Tech company, expanded its capital and credit sources to the UK through integration agreements with three partners (DueCourse, iwoca, MarketInvoice).
Square officially launched its UK market, as now businesses can finally use Square Readers in conjunction with the POS tool that has already been in the UK market for quite some time.
ShoreTel Launches New Collaboration Tools for Telecommuters
ShoreTel introduced a new team collaboration tool in the form of ad hoc chat spaces for remote workers earlier this month. However, with big players like Facebook, Slack and Atlassian already in a tug of war to own the market, it’s questionable how ShoreTel aims to steal marketshare.
Atlassian Integrates Products with Trello
As expected, Atlassian has quickly launched integrations of its products (JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket) into Trello. While this came as no surprise, the added integrations will be a boost for Trello users that have long applauded the ease of integration between different tools.
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