Vancouver market intelligence company DiscoverOrg will grow yet again, this time after buying Maryland-based competitor RainKing.
The deal, announced Monday, was struck for an undisclosed sum. DiscoverOrg co-founder and CEO Henry Schuck told The Columbian it cost them “at least $100 million.”
Besides eliminating a competitor, DiscoverOrg absorbs RainKing’s workforce, customers and proprietary software; and it also gains a wider reach into the East Coast market, Schuck said.
“We’re two companies in a really similar space, and together we have a much bigger platform to grow, and we’re really excited about that opportunity,” he said.
Both companies were founded in 2007 and have grown rapidly in the market intelligence world, scraping and researching highly focused customer data to be sold to clients.
RainKing’s nearly 200 employees will be offered a chance to move to DiscoverOrg’s Vancouver offices, 805 Broadway, according to Schuck. Still, the new presence in Bethesda, Md., “is definitely beneficial” for the company’s strategies to grow in the East Coast. DiscoverOrg also has an office in Philadelphia.
Adding RainKing’s workers is just the latest growth spurt for DiscoverOrg. Since early 2015, the company has grown from 140 workers to 350, and it is regularly highlighted as one of the fastest-growing in its industry.
Technology factored in the sale, too. DiscoverOrg now gets its hands on RainKing’s in-house software, which Schuck said will complement their own and combine for more potent sales intelligence.
“All of the development team is incredibly talented (at RainKing), and we’re obviously looking forward to integrating them into our team,” he said.
The acquisition also raises the revenues for DiscoverOrg. After boasting $71 million last year, Schuck said the company is now flirting with making $120 million.
“That’s a really exciting thing for the community, I think,” he said. He pointed out that it means that the road to success doesn’t travel exclusively through Portland, Seattle and San Francisco.
“I think Vancouver has a lot of advantages to build a software company,” he said.
Since 2014, DiscoverOrg has been majority owned by TA Associates. Goldmach Sachs Business Development Co., NXT Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and Antares Management also made large investments in spring 2016.
In a prepared statement, RainKing CEO John Stanfill said their sale helps them in their goal of building “the world’s must accurate database to drive our customers’ growth.”
“By joining forces with DiscoverOrg, we will realize that goal more quickly and more effectively than we would have independently,” he said.
There could be more moves from DiscoverOrg in the future. Schuck said that they don’t have any other deals lined up right now, but they continue to look for the right opportunities.
“We’ll continue to look at acquisitions,” he said. “I look at a handful of these a month and if I find one that checks all the boxes the way RainKing did, I think we’d be interested in acquiring additional companies in this space.”
