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eLocal Acquires Felix and CityGrid to Further Expand Performance-Based Advertising Platform
January 04, 2019 09:58 AM Eastern Standard Time
CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--eLocal today announced the acquisitions of Felix and CityGrid.
@eLocal acquires Felix and CityGrid to expand its performance-based advertising platform for local, regional and national service businesses #adtech #paypercall #payperlead
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eLocal, Felix, and CityGrid have separately been leaders in providing performance-based advertising for local, regional and national service businesses for over a decade. Together, they become one of the largest players in the pay-per-call and pay-per-lead industry.
As a result of this acquisition, along with its acquisition of Ring Router in October 2018, eLocal can now offer pay-per-call and pay-per-lead solutions within the Home Services, Legal, Insurance, Medical, and Financial verticals.
The combined eLocal, Felix, and CityGrid offering leverages the best aspects of each individual organization. “We are excited to now partner, rather than compete, with two of the early leaders in performance-based marketing,” said Bruce Aronow, CEO at eLocal. “eLocal has built an extraordinarily robust performance-based advertising platform and we intend to continue leveraging our technology and operational infrastructure to strategically expand and grow.”
The combined management team, with representation from each organization, has significant depth of experience and is well-positioned to execute on a shared vision. “There were tremendous synergies between what eLocal and Felix have built,” said Jill Labert, who assumes the role of Chief Revenue Officer at eLocal. “By leveraging the best-in-class aspects of each organization, we expect to deliver significant value to our clients and publishing partners.”
Fueled by an infusion of growth capital from LLR Partners in late 2017, eLocal is focused on continuing to augment its organic growth through targeted acquisitions. “Ring Router, Felix, and CityGrid are an important first step in our vision, as we continue to look for strategic acquisitions in 2019 and beyond,” Aronow added. “Piece by piece, together, we’re building something exceptional here, and this is just the beginning.”
About eLocal
eLocal is a fast-growing, 10-year-old performance-based advertising company, whose mission is to connect consumers with local businesses. eLocal has been at the forefront of a changing advertising industry by offering pay per call and pay per lead advertising solutions to businesses of all sizes. In 2017, eLocal’s founders won an EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award for E-Services, while, for the second year in a row, the company itself ranked among the fastest-growing in the Philadelphia Business Journal’s Soaring 76. Learn more here.
ELOCAL AND LLR PARTNERS
Release Summary
eLocal acquires Felix and CityGrid to expand its performance-based advertising platform for local, regional and national service businesses.
As digital flattens everything, B2B marketing has shifted its focus from decision-makers to everyday users, SAP CMO Alicia Tillman explains in a new episode of "Making Marketing.” https://t.co/R2f48ToYND
Founded in 1987, SICOM makes software that helps run quick service restaurants. Burger King and many of its franchisees are major users, though that arrangement is not exclusive for either party. SICOM has approximately 300 employees according to LinkedIn, half of whom are out of Lansdale. It made a couple of acquisitions while under LLR, including one as recently as last June.
LLR Partners had acquired SICOM in 2016. No word on what LLR paid for it, although its website says $250 million is tops for any one investment.
(Correction: though I got that $250 million figure from somewhere on the LLR website, LLR tells me: "The accurate figure is that we invest between $15 million and $100 million of growth capital in companies with up to $100 million in annual revenue". Which I took to mean LLR's acquisition price for SICOM probably didn't exceed $100 million or thereabouts. Pretty good turnover for two years.) Although that's simplistic; LLR probably put
more money in, such as for SICOM's acquisitions.
The acquirer, Global Payments (NYSE: GPN), is one of the leading payment processors in the world. Global Payments acquired Heartland Payment Systems, another former LLR portfolio company, for $4.3 Billion in 2016. There's a pattern here.
Heartland, which was formerly headquartered in Princeton, now calls Oklahoma City HQ.
Felix supports a pay-per-call model, and CityGrid provides a local content and advertising network to help brands manage their presence and promote business across hundreds of local information sources. These additions will enhance eLocal's web-based local marketing products.
Moorestown, NJ-based Tabula Rasa ( NASDAQ: TRHC ), which went public at $12.00 in September 2016, has been a pleasant surprise since the IPO, now trading at $61.27. It now has a market cap of $1.25 billion. Tabula Rasa provides data and analytical software which helps to improve healthcare outcomes. It agreed to acquire Brisbane Australia-based DoseMe for up to $30 million in total consideration. DoseMe's expert systems monitors and calculates the optimal patient IV dosage considering all the meds the patient is receiving. Combined with other Tabula Rasa products, the acquisition will boost its entry into the hospital market.
Bob Moore's (RJMetrics) new startup, CrossBeam , has a brilliant premise: a system to aid companies in building partner ecosystems to help in selling its products or services. Identifying and maintaining the right data sources, as well as a way to help identify possible matches, is key. CrossBeam will likely learn by eating its own dog food.
Los Angeles sues the company behind the Weather Channel app, which is owned by IBM, for slyly using location data for commercial purposes (New York Times) https://t.co/1iFypogCUm#mustreadblogs#feedly
Jeff Baumgartner tells us why all the cable companies do not share the same view of the future (especially Comcast)
Five Signs That the US Cable Industry Is Fracturing | Light Reading https://t.co/Mgdxg88Hze via @Light_Reading
I got off to a slow start in 2018. An MD gave me a prescription for a med that had possible side effects including Stephens-Johnson syndrome. He didn't tell me of the side effect nor did I do a search, though I knew about Stephens-Johnson. Anyway, I got it, and even when I was over the worse it took months before I could do more than link three sentences together.
But the point is not to reflect on that. Except to say I have seen enough horror stories to seriously distrust the medical system and hospitals. And that leads me to focus more on healthcare IT, or digital health, as one of the major themes I cover here.
Digital health investments reached an all-time high of $8.6 billion in 2018, according to a report from PwC and CB Insights. And most experts don't expect it to slow down soon. And there are more digital health startups in Philly than you can shake a stick at.
So in addition to Enterprise Tech and the Comcast world, Digital Health is the third leg of the triangle this website will cover. And I hope to be highlighting things that actually make a difference.
The $2 billion debt fund, formerly co-managed by Blackstone, was turned over to KKR in April.
The fund, renamed FS-KKR Capital Corp when the management contract was moved from Blackstone to KKR, wrote down five of its major investments. Thermasys, a Buffalo-based manufacturer of industrial heat exchangers that missed an interest payment in the autumn and has been unable to refinance debts having payments due next year, was one of the largest. KKR now values the company’s subordinated debt at $72.4 million, down from $112 million.
The FT reports that the problems were more than anticipated by KKR. It suggests that KKR is not as much of a workout-oriented firm as Blackstone, and because of risk uncertainty its valuations tend to be more conservative.
While the write down is not good news for the FSI or shareholders, by itself it doesn't seem to be an event of enough magnitude to flame existing fears of broader problems in the corporate debt market.
FS Investments now has about $24 billion in assets under management.
Most of of us know the story of how First Round Capital led Uber's small seed round and probably (at least partially) exited last year with a multi-billion dollar payoff. But besides other venture capital firms, there was also a small army of individual investors who joined in that round. One was Jeff Bezos, like he really needs it.
But another is West Philly-born talent manager and producer Troy Carter, who managed musicians like John Legend and Lady Gaga. He went on to be an executive at Spotify, and is now managing his own incubator, the Atom Factory, in LA.
It will take me awhile to figure out what happened here
Franklin Square loan fund plunges after switch to KKR https://t.co/0gXdPyLxlS via @financialtimes
David Sorin gives remarks at NJ Tech Council Awards Ceremony
David Sorin gives remarks at NJ Tech Council Awards Ceremony
Home » Around New Jersey » Meetings » News » NJ Tech People » tech entrepreneurship » David Sorin Accepts NJ Tech Council Legend of Technology Award
DAVID SORIN ACCEPTS NJ TECH COUNCIL LEGEND OF TECHNOLOGY AWARD
November 30, 2018 Esther Surden 0 Around New Jersey, Meetings, News, NJ Tech People, tech entrepreneurship,
[ David Sorin is Co-Chair of the Venture Capital & Emerging Growth Companies practice at McCarter and English. On Thursday, he was honored by the New Jersey Tech Council for his role in creating and promoting the tech ecosystem in New Jersey. We’ve reposted Dave’s remarks here.]
Thank you, thank you all so very much. It is nice to know that I am finally a legend in the minds of someone other than my own. Obligatory bad joke aside, it has been my great privilege to have a front row seat, sometimes as an observer but most frequently as one of the members of the starting team, to the development and evolution of our technology and emerging growth, entrepreneurial and investor ecosystems. As everyone in this room knows, it is not for the faint of heart. It is, however, a most rewarding, exhilarating, sometimes frustrating, but always intellectually challenging and educational ride.
My love affair with NJ technology and entrepreneurship began over two decades ago when, as a newly minted law firm partner with a young family, my wife and I left NYC and Wall Street Law so that I could pursue my goal of building in NJ the legal resources necessary to meet the unique and complex securities law, financing, intellectual property, and M&A transactional needs of emerging growth tech, tech-enabled and life sciences enterprises and the investors who support them. Prior to that, NJ’s business enterprises generally crossed the Hudson and Delaware Rivers in search of such resources in NY and Philadelphia. Today, such river crossings are no longer necessary – a change of which I am particularly proud.
NJ can and should take great pride in a rich and enviable history of entrepreneurial and technological leadership, defined, in part, by Edison and Einstein, the pharmaceutical, telecommunications and information technology industries, some of the best colleges and universities in the world, a highly educated, incredibly productive workforce, and national leadership in patent issuances per capita, all evidencing our innovative and inventive culture.
Even so, nestled between the overpowering urban centers of NY and Philadelphia, NJ seemed to be without a reputation of our own. We lacked the hubs of urban/business centers and infrastructure that often foment commercialization, technological innovation, entrepreneurial fervor, and investment, leaving us without a center of commerce or a center of influence for technology and entrepreneurship.
Our universities often displayed a shocking lack of interest in commercialization. While Stanford helped to build Silicon Valley, Harvard and MIT the Route 128 Corridor, our colleges and universities left a void. Government policies failed to promote the right incentives. There was an absence of any type of statewide networking, information sharing, lobbying or educational efforts to nurture, foster, enable and sustain the change we so sorely needed. Change that would, with purpose, laser focus and proactivity, create and support an entrepreneurial and technology ecosystem.
Fortunately, in the mid-1990s, there was a small group of us, many of you here tonight as you have been annually the last twenty-some years, who partnered with a force of nature, Maxine Ballen, a local community organizer, so well-known to all of us, to begin to foster the change we needed.
I recall fondly that afternoon in the mid-1990s, when John Martinson, John Bailye, Mel Baiada, Virginia Alling, Brian Hughes, the late, great Caren Franzini, and I, joined Maxine to discuss the viability of a statewide initiative to foster and sustain a leading entrepreneurial and technology ecosystem. Right then and there, each of us committed personal, professional and financial resources to an endeavor soon to be dubbed the New Jersey Technology Council.
What a difference 20 plus years has made. Still far short of ideal, significantly less than perfect, but ever striving to improve, NJ’s entrepreneurial and technology ecosystem is an order of magnitude stronger, more vital and more sustainable than ever before. The New Jersey Technology Council may well have been the initial catalyst, followed soon thereafter by our co-creation of a venture fund and an angel network. We saw the needs and we acted to create solutions and opportunities. The intrepid companies we support develop new products, services and solutions which improve quality of life, create jobs, build wealth, and enhance productivity, creating a sustaining upward spiral.
NJTC’s success led to new and innovative collaborations. At McCarter, in addition to our support of NJTC, we support and create various meetups that have emerged to bring resources to local communities. We were among the earliest and continuing supporters of the efforts to create a national presence in technology and entrepreneurship in NJ and NJ can now boast that it is the birthplace and home of Propelify, an annual festival of technology, inspired by and now rivaling SxSW.
I wish I had the time and immediate recall to give thanks and pay homage to all of you who have contributed so mightily to the sea change in this ecosystem. Sorry to borrow a phrase oft cited, but it really takes a village. I am honored to accept this award but fully appreciate that all that has happened to help this ecosystem thrive is the result of the collective efforts of all of us working together, led by visionaries fueled by passion, energy and commitment and supported by believers and hard workers with shared goals, common values and defining principles. And, of course, that is enabled by those who provide tireless and unwavering support.
Thank you to my McCarter partners and colleagues, many celebrating here tonight, whose commitment to NJ and this community are empowering and to Randi, my wife, and Lindsay, Michelle, Jared and Kayla, my children, for allowing me to pursue my path with zeal and passion, often at your significant personal sacrifice. As my McCarter partners and colleagues and my clients know, one of my favorite words is “onward.” So, onward to even greater things for NJ’s technology and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
Thanks so very much.
Esther Surden is Publisher and Editor of NJTechWeekly, and a contributor to Philly Tech News. This article originally appeared in NJTechWeekly, and is republished here with her permission.
Just remembering how Sears, along with IBM and CBS (which quickly dropped out), was an original investor in Trintex which became Prodigy, a 1980's startup that intended to turn Americans into online junkies.
The Prodigy service launched in 1988, and competed mostly with CompuServe in the embryonic consumer online market. There was no public internet at the time, speeds were at a crawl, and home PC penetration was limited. Prodigy was known for its cool graphical user interface and some popular and often heated bulletin boards that served as forums. Subscribers reached 1,000,000 at its peak.
Then AOL came along to dominate the consumer market, quickly followed by the Internet. Prodigy did many innovative things to compete ( read this article in The Atlantic ) , and converted to become an ISP in the late 90s. IBM and Sears sold their interests to a group led by Carlos Slim in 1996 for $200 million. It was estimated that IBM and Sears had invested more than $1 billion in Prodigy since its founding. The original Prodigy service was shut down in 1999.
Fox will buy back its RSNs; CBS will extend SEC deal; the NHL will make moves to split its TV package. These predictions, and more, in SBJ's Sports Media 2019 column. https://t.co/nCBL07mxdJ
