Two days after , New York’s Verve announced Wednesday it is for an undisclosed amount.
Roximity, co-founded by Danny Newman and Austin Gayer, developed wireless beacon technology for retailers that can send a notification like a private sale to shoppers’ smartphones as they enter the store, movie theater or other venue. Verve builds a similar platform to target mobile users anywhere — just not indoors.
“What we do is very complementary,” Newman said. “They do a lot of stuff at the store and neighborhood level. We bring it inside the store.”
Combining the companies creates a new form of mobile advertising and data collection that can collect specific customer behavior “with absolute certainty,” down to how long shoppers linger in a specific aisle.
Newman declined to share the sale price, but he said that for the company to achieve its potential, it needed more money or the right partner.
“We were looking at what it would take from a funding perspective. We could have raised something smaller, in the $10 to $15 million range and started to chip away at those goals. But what we’re really looking to do requires a lot of people from a sales and technology perspective to get to that point as quickly as possible,” he said. “… To be totally honest, some of the other offers out there would have been more immediately financially better but not aligned with the big vision of where we want to take this.”
Newman said Roximity’s eight employees, including himself, will stay in Denver and continue to focus on the indoor side of mobile advertising. Verve, which employs more than 200, is expected to invest in the Denver operation and already has salespeople in the area.
Currently, Roximity has , and Newman expects the team will double in size soon because of the acquisition.
When Verve announced its round Monday, it said it has been growing 50 percent annually for the past four years and recently opened a United Kingdom office. The new funds will help it “continue building new data and platform solutions for its expanding customer base.” Verve previously raised , according to CrunchBase.
Newman is very active in the Denver startup community. He hosts the with fellow entrepreneur Luke Beatty, who is president of Media Brands at AOL. The podcast aims to on both sides of U.S. 36.
Roximity was founded in 2011 at the TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco. Newman and Gayer by developing a beacon prototype. The company has since received from investors including Fenox Venture Capital, Ludlow Ventures and Fraser McCombs Capital.
