SacStarts - acquisition

Games maker KlickNation acquired by EA for reported $35 million

Adam Kalsey — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 20:18:07 +0000

Downtown Sacramento’s social game creator KlickNation has been acquired by Electronic Arts. The purchase price was not disclosed, but Inside Social Games says a source tells them it could be up to $35 million after earnouts and retention bonuses.

KlickNation is joining EA’s BioWare division, makers of games like Mass Effect 2 and Star Wars: The Old Republic. The Sacramento team will become BioWare Sacramento, and KlickNation founder Mark Otero will head the newly-formed BioWare Social studio.

KlickNation is privately held and has not reported taking any outside investment. They have 70 employees making Facebook games like Superhero City and Six Gun Galaxy. When the company started building their first games, they bootstrapped by working out of the second floor of Otero’s other venture, a Mochii Yogurt shop. They compensated early employees in equity, and allowed them to earn cash by working in the yogurt shop.

Excerpt:

Downtown Sacramento's social game creator [KlickNation](http://www.klicknation.com/) has been [acquired by Electronic Arts](http://investors.ea.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=629489).

IMified acquired by Voxeo

Scott Hildebrand — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:00:01 +0000

Sacramento startup IMified (profile), founded by SacStart’s founder Adam Kalsey, has been acquired for an undisclosed sum by Voxeo, a provider of platforms for building voice and telephony applications. Voxeo is a privately-held company headquartered in Orlando, Florida. Adam and the other founders of IMified have joined Voxeo’s R&D group as part of the sale.

IMified offers a simple, web-based platform that enables companies and developers to write an instant messaging (IM) application once and connect it to all the public IM networks, including AIM (AOL), GTalk (Google), MSN (Microsoft) and Yahoo. Building, managing, and scaling an interactive IM application or “bot” has traditionally been a complex and frustrating task. IMified’s solution removes the complexity and provides a simple solution for building and deploying IM applications on multiple public IM networks using one simple API.

Voxeo’s products are often used as part of unified communications and self-service application suites. IMified’s technology will extend their capabilities in this area. Jonathan Taylor, Voxeo’s President and CEO said, “instant Messaging is an important piece of any company’s unified communication strategy. IMified significantly expands Voxeo’s unified communications offerings with the worlds largest IM application platform and most experienced development team.”

The existing IMified services won’t immediately change, and the service is still taking signups for new developers. Voxeo has not revealed any future integration plans.

Adam is remaining in Sacramento and will continue to be involved in SacStarts.

Livemarkets Acquired

Adam Kalsey — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 23:01:20 +0000

Online ad network Traffic Marketplace has acquired Rocklin’s Livemarkets for an undisclosed sum. Livemarkets provides a technology that gives banner ads click-to-chat features and allows consumers to have a real time chat with a salesperson.

Venture M&A activity at highest point since 2000

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:13:08 +0000

The Business Journal is reporting that US-based merger and acquisition activity for venture backed companies was it it’s highest point since 2000.

The Dow Jones and VentureOne U.S. Liquidity Report for the third quarter of 2007 shows $10.5 billion in transactions. This is a 31 percent increase over Q3 2006 and the highest quarterly amount since 2000.

FeedCrier Acquired

Scott Hildebrand — Wed, 16 May 2007 10:30:15 +0000

There's no reason to cry anymore because our very own Adam Kalsey's FeedCrier, has been swept off its feet by IMified. Big congratulations to Adam and we'll be looking forward to see what the extended team can accomplish.

According to Pete Cashmore of Mashable, FeedCrier was a technology buy, but according to me they just want to work with Adam because he looks like John Travolta. He also makes a mean cup of coffee which makes him a quite valuable co-worker.

CBS Acquires MaxPreps

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 18:34:33 +0000

Cameron Park startup MaxPreps has announced they are being acquired by CBS.

MaxPreps provides coverage of High School sports across the country, including news, scores, and stats of high school sports and athletes. The company took $7 million in funding last July with a series B round from DFJ Frontier, Dolphin Ventures, and BEV Ventures.

CBS will make MaxPreps part of their College Sports TV package, a momve that expands the network’s coverage of sports to include high school, college, and professional sports. Youth sports are becoming big business as witnessed by the rise of AAU and other competitive programs for kids as young as 8. Perhaps the next big startup will be around providing stats and rankings on younger children?

WebRaiser acquired

Adam Kalsey — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:57:22 +0000

Sacramento’s WebRaiser has been acquired by Flextronics International of Singapore. Bob Shallit reports in the Sacramento Bee that the details of the deal will be announced in April.

WebRaiser products help business build customer-self service kiosks. The company is located near Mather Field.

This is the second local acquisition for Flextronics. In December, it paid $243 million for Roseville’s International DisplayWorks.

CoreLogic Acquired by First American

Adam Kalsey — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 20:30:29 +0000

Rancho Cordova based CoreLogic, a maker of fraud detection software for the mortgage industry has been acquired by First American for $100 million in cash and an unspecified amount of stock. The company will remain in Sacramento.

This is the second local real estate technology company that Santa Ana’s First American has acquired. In 2001, First American purchased transaction management and MLS software maker Realty Plus Online for an undisclosed amount. (Disclosure: I was an employee of Realty Plus Online immediately before the acquisition.)

CoreLogic was founded in 1997 as C&S Marketing by Kraig Clark and Steve Schroeder and has made Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest growing companies for the last three years.

Web firm acquires stake in consulting shop

Adam Kalsey — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 00:50:42 +0000

Sacramento web design and hosting firm American Web Services has acquired 1/5 of Enterprise Software Solutions Group, a local provider of consulting services and web publishing software, the Sacramento Business Journal is reporting.

Meridian Project Systems

Adam Kalsey — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 17:25:06 +0000

Yet another local acquisition. Meridian Project Systems has been acquired.