Climb's M&A Weekly: Deals by Yext, Formstack and Miro

Welcome to Climb Advisor’s weekly deal newsletter highlighting transactions announced last week across the B2B tech landscape.

Climb Advisors is an M&A and credit advisory firm focused on B2B software and services companies in the range of $5m to $100m+ enterprise value. We guide CEOs and business owners through the process of selling their business & assist investors in sourcing & closing great deals. We love to talk markets and share beneficial information - please reach out any time.

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Yext to acquire Hearsay Systems for $125M

Overview: Yext, a leading digital presence platform for multi location brands, is acquiring Hearsay Systems for an initial $125M, with the potential for an added $95M depending on various performance metrics. Hearsay provides financial services firms with engagement solutions across social media, websites, text, and voice, ultimately helping them grow their business and improve customer engagement whilst remaining compliant with industry laws and regulations. Recent reports claiming Yext themselves were rumoured to be exploring a sale adds further intrigue to this announcement. Read more here.

Climb Comment: Powerful verticalization move here for Yext as they move further into the financial services space. Hearsay provides compliant marketing solutions for financial advisors and managers & combining with Yext’s suite of digital management tools will provide two-way revenue creation opportunities.

With rumours that Yext is exploring sale options of their own could be that this is a case of ‘steady-as-she-goes’ - always a good practice prior to full commitment to exploring a transaction - or they could be looking to take advantage of multiple arbitrage & increased scale in a potential exit. Will be interesting to see.

Open Raven bought by PSG Equity and Silversmith Capital backed Formstack

Overview: Data management and security company Open Raven has been acquired by Formstack to help expand their workflow platform. Formstack currently offers a suite of industry leading form, document and eSignature software. By integrating Open Raven, the LA based acquirer can add data discovery, classification and visibility solutions to their platform, thus allowing clients to make more use of data throughout their workflows whilst remaining secure and compliant. Read more here.

Climb Comment: Integrated, real-time security is the play with this deal and it tracks with trends we’ve highlighted over the last year. Data security & governance are more important than ever to enterprises and externally shared documents represent a major leakage point. Embedding data security into a document management platform like Formstack is a huge win for customers & great strategic move.

US and Amsterdam based Miro strike a deal with Uizard

Overview: Miro, an online whiteboard platform designed to help remote teams collaborate, has acquired Uizard and their AI powered product design platform. Based in Copenhagen, Uizard’s design tool is used by product teams to design wireframes, mockups, and prototypes for apps, websites and digital products. Key features include the ability to turn screenshots into clickable UI mockups, hand-drawn sketches into wireframes and import UI themes from a URL or image. Read more here.

Climb Comment: Miro is probably the preeminent online whiteboard tool, with 99% of the Fortune 500 and more than 70m users worldwide relying on Miro boards to keep track of organizational goals and projects. It’s a tool that’s beautiful in its simplicity - an endless canvas to stick notes on & helpful workflow/sharing tools to add a management layer, helping to fill the space between text docs & spreadsheets. Uizard is a very neat set of tools in its own right, with AI powered mockup creation & physical sketch import. Design teams everywhere rejoice, & kudos to all involved.

Madhive uses recent funding to buy Frequence

Overview: A year on from receiving $300M from Goldman Sachs, Madhive makes a splash by acquiring Frequence. The acquirer’s ultimate goal is to become an end-to-end digital advertising hub for local businesses and SMBs across all channels, not just on TV and video which it currently serves. This is where Frequence comes in. Their omnichannel planning tools plug a significant gap for Madhive, helping them improve their advertising campaigns’ targeting and results. Frequence’s team of approx. 350 employees will also join Madhive post transaction as their headcount nears the 600 mark. Read more here.

Climb Comment: Sizable deal here in adtech, though terms were undisclosed. Madhive is doubling down on a move towards true omnichannel ad-serving capabilities, an expansion from their current focus on connected TV. Via proprietary geofencing & retargeting capabilities Madhive aims to make placing TV ads accessible to local businesses who have historically focused on other channels. Frequence comes with a platform that offers even more robust local targeting - for example if a local coffee shop wants to reach customers in a defined radius, Frequence can help them do that across multiple channels. Interesting space to watch.

GSV acquires Kologik as they continue to invest in public safety technology

Overview: Greater Sum Ventures (GSV), a family office and growth equity firm based in Knoxville, is creating a platform of technology solutions for public safety and government agencies. Following on from investments in Utility Associates, SOMA Global and STRAX Intelligence Group, they’ve just announced the acquisition of Kologik. Based in Baton Rouge, Kologik provides cloud based software for law enforcement, with features including computer-aided dispatch, records management and jail management. Read more here.

Climb Comment: Govtech remains hot for investment & particularly software solutions serving local & regional governments. The long tail here of agencies which still need migration to digital still exists and firms are eager to deploy sales & marketing resources to capture that market share. Add a generally increasing budget for public safety & digitization measures and its an equation for a highly investable space.

Article of the week

This week’s article explores the rise of PE and how these firms are helping shape the market today. What does this mean for companies and CEOs moving forward? How are strategies going to change? The downfall of what Godfather character was referenced? Find out all here.

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Thanks for following along & hope you found something useful or interesting.

All the best,

Nick Cellura

Principal, Climb Advisors

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