Last week was acquisition mania in the Seattle tech sector—but before we get to that part of our weekly review, let’s get deep for a minute. In this story, I took a look at the international growth of Startup Weekend, and how its format hits on the same mental triggers that make your favorite video games so addictive. Now, on to the buyouts:
New York’s Augme paid $44.5 million for Hipcricket, in a move that will combine the two companies’ forces in marketing over mobile channels for some of the biggest consumer brands out there. Hipcricket’s not just getting absorbed, they’re kind of taking over: CEO Ivan Braiker will be president at Augme and gets a seat on the board, and COO Eric Harber will head operations.
AdXpose, a company that has been through several rounds of changes in name and product, got snapped up in a $22 million transaction by comScore. And on the same day, game studio Griptonite was acquired for $28 million by Glu Mobile. Oh, and also that same day, Clearwire (NASDAQ: [[ticker:CLWR]]) said it had a plan to officially adopt new LTE technology—if it could raise more money to pay for that plan.
Mobile-device maker HTC came shopping in Seattle too, buying mobile data backup startup Dashwire in a deal valued up to $18.5 million. It wasn’t too far of a trip, since HTC’s North American headquarters are in Bellevue.
Sucker Punch Studios, maker of hits for PlayStation consoles, will now work directly for the mothership after an acquisition of undisclosed size by Sony. Sucker Punch will stay in place, and continue to focus on its one-title-at-a-time approach.
Whew! With that all done, we took at look at the growth at BigDoor Media, a Seattle gamification startup that’s working on a new way of engaging website users through game mechanics, with the hope of giving publishers a whole new way to sell advertising.
And in quick fundraising news: ChoozOn raised $3.2 million, PivotLink raised $8.1 million, and Zipline Games raised $400,000 and added a new board member.
