Performable Picked Up by HubSpot

Cambridge, MA-based HubSpot, a marketing tech company, has acquired fellow Cambridge startup Performable, which focuses on marketing automation. Terms of the deal weren’t announced, but Performable’s 18-person team, including founder and CEO David Cancel, will join HubSpot (now more than 260 strong) at the latter company’s headquarters on First Street. Cancel will become HubSpot’s chief product officer.

The companies say the merger will help HubSpot enable its business customers to “turn more visitors into leads and customers.” Of course, HubSpot is also gaining top product development, user experience, and engineering talent from Performable. From the latter company’s point of view, becoming part of HubSpot should accelerate its drive to become a multi-billion-dollar business that transforms the marketing industry, Cancel said in a statement.

Back in March, HubSpot announced a $32 million Series D round led by Sequoia Capital, Google Ventures, and Salesforce.com. HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan told me then that his company was looking to make some acquisitions. Meanwhile, Performable, which was backed by Charles River Ventures, was looking to become the Salesforce.com of online marketing and automation, Cancel told me.

This is certainly a deal that has the tech community talking. We’ll have more on the story as further details emerge.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.