How would you feel if one of the world’s biggest tech companies opened it’s cheque book to buy your business?
Any sadness about the end of one chapter of the company journey, is likely to be tempered with the size of the purchase price right?
How bout 163Mill?
Thats reportedly the size of the amount Google has agreed to pay for the purchase of the Irish start up Pointy.
No figures mentioned but the deal is confirmed on the Pointy website.
In total, the Dublin headquartered retail tech platform raised $19 million in funding in it’s journey to the Google exit, some payday for investors and in particular co-founders Mark Cummins and Charles Bibby.
Employing 85 in Dublin, company co-founder Mark Cummins outlined the firms vision at the Web Summit explaining how they were helping local retailers with the challenge of going online.
It’s early investors included the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Bebo, Michael Birch and the co-founder of Transferwise, Taavet Hinrikus.
Dublin-based Frontline Ventures is also involved.
Remarking on the purchase, Peter Chane Senior Director, Local SMB Products with the internet giant said ‘Google has long been committed to helping small businesses grow and thrive in the online world. One of the challenges small merchants face is getting their in-store inventory information online in a way that is easy to manage and reliably up to date. ‘
Confirming the deal he said ‘we’ve entered into an agreement to acquire Pointy, a company based in Dublin, Ireland that has helped thousands of local retailers bring their product inventory online. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the coming weeks.’
‘With Pointy, merchants simply plug a small box into their barcode scanner or install the Pointy app on their point of sale system, which surfaces the products that they sell directly into the “See what’s in store” section of their business profile on Google Search.
Pointy has been one of our key partners, helping thousands of local merchants display this data within Google. We’re looking forward to working with Pointy to help even more local retailers bring their product inventory online.
For the company co-founders ‘The last six years have been an incredible adventure, and today marks the start of a new chapter. From small beginnings, we’re very proud to serve local retailers in almost every city and every town in the US and throughout Ireland. Many incredibly talented people have joined our team, we’ve received the backing of an amazing group of investors, and formed some fantastic partnerships. It is a great pleasure to work on something that helps local businesses in towns and cities everywhere.’
It seemed the deal was a natural move for both entities.
‘Over the past several years we’ve developed a very close partnership with Google. It became clear that we shared the same vision of how technology can improve local retail businesses. So today is a natural next step in our journey. By joining forces, we will be able to help people discover local stores and products on a much larger scale. We think this is the right way to accomplish what we set out to do – to bring the world’s retailers online and give them the tools they need to thrive.
When we started Pointy, our mission was to make things better for local retailers. That remains our mission today. All of our services continue to operate as usual. We look forward to building even better services in the future, with the backing of Google’s resources and reach.
Today is a big step forward for Pointy, but there is still a very long way to go. We’re as excited about the future as when we first started.
Well done Mark + Charles! Looks like it’s a great place to work too!
