In an interesting deal today, San Francisco mobile firm Tapjoy has acquired the core team from Viximo, a social gaming tools startup in Cambridge, MA. Terms weren’t disclosed, and the companies’ announcement makes the deal sound like an expansion for Tapjoy (into the Boston area) rather than an acquisition per se. The companies share a Boston-area investor, North Bridge Venture Partners.
The upshot of the deal is that Tapjoy now has a Boston studio that knows social tech and can apply it to the company’s mission of helping consumers discover mobile apps and enabling developers to reach audiences and build their businesses. It sounds like the new studio could be a strong foothold for Tapjoy’s developer relations and advertising sales efforts.
Viximo, which started in 2007, has been pretty visible in the Boston startup community. My colleague Wade spoke with Viximo CEO Dale Strang in early 2010 about the company’s strategy in virtual goods for games and online publishers. Viximo co-founder Brian Balfour left the company last year to work on new projects, including ed-tech startup Boundless Learning. His fellow co-founder, Sean Lindsay, stayed on and is now vice president of engineering for Tapjoy. Viximo raised a total of about $10 million from North Bridge and Sigma Partners, according to our records.
Meanwhile, Tapjoy has grown into a sizable mobile advertising and app distribution firm. The company started as Offerpal Media and acquired the startup Tapjoy in 2010, taking its name. The combined company had raised just north of $70 million as of last summer from investors including D.E. Shaw, InterWest Partners, North Bridge, Rho Ventures, and J.P. Morgan.
