mergertech

Since it's so difficult to become the next Match.com or the next Tinder, online dating is a tech space where mergers and acquisitions aren't uncommon. This week, it was announced that Match bought PlentyOfFish for $575 million.

There may be nothing wrong with a particular system of operation or communication. It just might not make sense when IT decision makers scale it to a bigger, more diverse application. Part of remaining open to possibilities is acknowledging that some ways of doing business need to fall by the wayside.

"Think beyond just the big tech names," writes Krantz. "Investors have been piling into the shares of the mega tech names for years…but now the game is shifting smaller. The recent tech deals have centered around companies with an average market value of roughly $1 billion…The greatest opportunities for tech investors lie with the smaller large companies and the larger mid-caps."

Mergers and acquisitions between companies are built on relationships between people. As the pace of tech M&A picks up even more, the shuffle of finding and persuading companies to take a look at your firm becomes even more frenzied. One of the best ways to put your brand on the map and get your foot in the door of important meetings is to build a strong professional network.

Uber, the popular ride-sharing app firm, has purchased digital-navigation technology from Microsoft and acquired 100 employees from the company. In a marketplace dominated by strong navigational abilities, Uber has made other deals over the last year to boost its in-house capabilities.

After announcing that it planned to sell its assets to Staples back in February, office supply chain Office Depot has finally gained the approval of its shareholders to go ahead with the merger. However, nothing is definite yet, as the two companies still have to get permission from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) before the merger can be completed, and the commission has previously declined to give the go-ahead for the two companies to merge.

On the surface, a company like Spotify looks like a glossy entertainment enterprise. From collaborations with popular artists to partnerships with music festivals, from the customer perspective, the focus is on music and access to streaming songs.

This week, it was announced that Arcadia Healthcare Solutions has acquired Sage Technologies for $28 million. Arcadia is a Burlington, Massachusetts-based analysis firm and Sage Technologies is headquartered in Illinois.

"Bidders thus are more likely to target firms with retirement-age CEOs, possibly because of these CEOs' reduced resistance to takeovers," summarizes Matt Nesvisky of the study's findings. "The increase in takeover activity appears precisely at the age-65 threshold, with no gradual increase as CEOs approach retirement age, ruling out many alternative explanations."

There are times when mergers or acquisitions are used as a tool of retirement. When a longtime CEO is finished professionally and has no one to turn his or her business over to, sometimes a merger or acquisition can set his or her brainchild up for success while presenting a nest egg for retirement. A study called "CEO Preferences and Acquisitions" by Dirk Jenter and Katharina Lewellen of the National Bureau of Economic Research described this phenomenon in the traditional way these deals are viewed.

Photoshop has deeply engrained itself in public consciousness, from the images we see on billboards and magazines to the tools entrepreneurs use to brand their companies. With the rise of 3D printing, the needs for visual creations are quickly outgrowing the first two dimensions. As such, it was announced this week that Adobe, creator of Photoshop, InDesign and other popular content creation software, has purchased Mixamo.

Machine learning is a cornerstone of tech development but sometimes training machines to absorb information can take time. Whetlab is a company that has pioneered systems to accelerate that process, reducing the amount of time it requires to get new machine learning systems off the ground.

This week, it was announced that Bloglovin', a blog reading platform, acquired social shopping startup called Finale. According to TechCrunch, this was in large part due to the firm's leader, Giordano Bruno Contestabile, who will become the new CEO of Bloglovin'.

One reason why companies merge and/or acquire smaller entities is to improve leadership on both sides. If your startup is on the verge of capitalizing through ecommerce or other sales, it's possible that current leadership doesn't have the expertise to bridge the transition. L

As a meme, "there's an app for that" has come to fruition. Today, professionals and consumers rely on apps for virtually every area of their real and digital lives. As such, the platforms that power apps require management systems that are responsive, diagnostic and otherwise facilitate the implementation of many applications at one time.

"Start your capital search with a good business plan that shows investors and lenders your company's potential," explains Inc. Magazine. "Follow that up with a thorough knowledge of the resources available and a determination to make your business a reality, and you should be on your way to uncovering a source that fits your new business's cash needs."

"We will continue to publish under the same name and leadership, with editorial independence," Re/code founders Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg wrote in a note to readers. "This is the next big step in our mission to bring you quality tech journalism, because our work will now be amplified and enhanced by Vox Media's deep and broad skill set."

Take Yahoo's touchstone acquisition of Tumblr, for example. We've discussed the purchase on this blog before, but one of the most striking things about it is the fact that Yahoo was traditionally known as a search engine and email service provider. As the tech landscape diversified over the last decade, the pressure for Yahoo to compete and remain relevant caused CEO Marissa Meyer to seek new ways to position the company. Tumblr, a blogging platform, is a space to view anything from celebrity memes to personal essays.

The merger or acquisition process is fraught with a great deal of sensitive information. Keeping certain details private can be the difference between signing a lucrative deal and losing the trust and attention of your prospective parent company. That's why much of the negotiation happens in closed meetings until more information is available to share with the public. However, deciding when to alert employees to decisions that will shape their future and that of your company can be a challenge.

On this blog, we recently discussed Verizon's intent to purchase web giant AOL. As an East Coast-based telecommunications corporation, Verizon doesn't naturally compete with companies like Facebook and Google, but some experts say that its latest purchase may position Verizon to rival those industry leaders in the increasingly heated area of web advertising.