The move will bolster ScribbleLive’s client roster while doubling its engineering team and expanding its product offering.
Toronto-based Scribble Technologies Inc., makers of the real-time engagement platform ScribbleLive, has just announced the acquisition of California-based content engineering platform CoveritLive.
The move will bolster ScribbleLive's client roster while doubling its engineering team and expanding its product offering.
When Scribble Technologies initially launched in 2008, CEO Vincent Mifsud says its main focus was on clients in the media industry, but over time the creation and monetization of real-time digital content spilled over to major brands and the sports industry as well.
Following the acquisition, ScribbleLive now boasts more than 1500 customers, including 500 enterprise clients and 200 international brands, as well as all three of America's top news networks and more than half of North America's most-read newspapers.
CoveritLive also brings with it key clients in the sports industry; including the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, as well as 100 other professional sports teams."They have a lot of domain expertise in the sports market," said Mr. Mifsud. "That's one of the verticals we have identified as key."
Mr. Mifsud adds that CoveritLive's engineering team was already based out of Toronto, and has now been integrated with his existing staff. "We've doubled the size of the engineering team essentially, and together with their expertise and ours I think we can create quite a powerful research and development organization that can build a lot of great products going forward."
The respective engineering teams will continue to support their existing products, said Mr. Mifsud, before eventually converging into a single offering.
Recent history has seen a variety of major enterprise resource planning and customer relations management tools integrated into a suite of resources under a single platform, and Mr. Mifsud believes the content engagement market will soon follow that same trend.
"Marketers and brands and media companies want a platform to handle planning all the way through to publishing and measuring impact," he said. "If you look at other markets, this ability to provide an entire platform suite always emerges as the key winner in markets."
This year Scribble Technologies is expected to reach $10-million in revenue, having grown organically at 70 to 80 per cent annually.
Mr. Mifsud was unable to disclose the value of the acquisition, at the request of Demand Media, CoveritLive's former, publicly traded owners. He did, however, reveal that it was financed through Scribble Technologies' existing shareholders, including Export Development Canada, Georgian Partners, Summerhill Venture Partners and Rogers Venture Partners, as well as the company's existing funds.
"Together the two companies are a real contender in this market, and I think this shows that we do have very aggressive growth plans," said Mr. Mifsud. "If we're not in the lead we're definitely contenders to lead the market, and that's the main goal of what we're trying to build."
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