Silicon Valley’s LifeSite Snaps Up Personal-Data App Mustbin

A new acquisition in the Boston tech scene today: Mustbin, a mobile app for organizing and securing personal data such as photos and documents, is getting bought by LifeSite, a “digital vault” startup based in Mountain View, CA. Terms of the deal aren’t being disclosed.

The deal is an “asset-only” acquisition, according to a spokeswoman, and no Mustbin employees are joining LifeSite. LifeSite says it will transition Mustbin users to its LifeSite Vault service and will retire the Mustbin app.

Boston-based Mustbin has been led by CEO and serial entrepreneur Saty Mahajan. “The Mustbin app was created as a digital safe haven for everything important in your life,” Mahajan said in a prepared statement. “We are pleased to pass the torch to LifeSite to provide an advanced solution and secure new home for your information.”

Mustbin was founded in 2012 by Brian Shin, the founder and former CEO of Visible Measures (which was recently acquired by AcuityAds). The company raised a $4.5 million venture round in 2013, led by DAG Ventures; other investors include General Catalyst, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Northgate Capital, Dharmesh Shah, and Jonathan Kraft. By my count, Mustbin raised a total of $6 million in equity funding.

LifeSite is actually a younger company than Mustbin. It was founded in 2015 and has raised at least $5 million in venture investment. The Silicon Valley startup is led by CEO and co-founder Chris Wong.

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.