Less than a month after completing a fund raising round in which it raised tens of millions of dollars from South African media company Naspers, Israeli company SimilarWeb is using part of the capital in order to expand. The company has bought Israeli early-stage company TapDog, for a few million dollars in shares and cash, less than a year after it was founded. Like SimilarWeb, TapDog deals in competitive intelligence. Its competitive intelligence engine simulates the way an analyst thinks, creates hypotheses and draws conclusions regarding the activities of businesses. According to the company, its approach towards intelligence focuses on deeply understanding information sources’ behavior and neutralizing biases.
TapDog's solution is very like SimilarWeb's. It draws its information from websites and presents it graphically. In fact, it drew data from SimilarWeb itself, which is what led to the direct connection between the companies. TapDog is a graduate of the UpWest Labs accelerator, and to date has raised about $500,000, from angel investor Gigi Levy among other sources.
The acquisition of TapDog is on an acq-hire basis, that is, buying the company for its manpower. TapDog's five founders and employees will join SimilarWeb, while the service and website they have offered up to now will be shut down. SimilarWeb is in the process of hiring employees, and, after the acquisition is completed, it intends to hire a further 15 people.
SimilarWeb founder and CEO Or Offer said, "This acquisition is part of our growth strategy, and we plan to continue acquiring companies. We have found five amazing guys, with the same passion for the product and vision we offer for monitoring the Internet. We examined the acquisition even before the latest fund-raising round, but the round we completed gave us the financial backing."
SimilarWeb was founded in 2009 by Offer and Nir Cohen. More than two years ago, it changed direction from downloadable add-ons to its current activity, monitoring and analysis of Internet traffic. The complex analysis behind the company's technology provides straightforward answers in a very user-friendly visual format.
For example, it is possible to see which countries visitors to a website come from, which sites link to it and which sites it links to, which keywords bring users to it, and which social networks refer to it.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on March 20, 2014
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