LinkedIn said Tuesday it will pay $175 million to acquire Bizo, a startup whose marketing platform helps businesses identify, reach and engage with their target audiences online.
Mountain View-based LinkedIn said the acquisition of San Francisco-based Bizo is 10 percent stock and 90 percent cash.
The deal is the second in as many weeks for LinkedIn, which last week bought San Francisco-based Newsle for an undisclosed sum.
Bizo was spun off from Massachusetts-based business information search engine ZoomInfo in 2008. Its co-founders include CEO Russell Glass, Chief Operating Officer Bryan Burdick, Chief Technology Officer Donnie Flood, business development chief Mark Dye, sales and ad operations chief Lee Byrneand ZoomInfo CEO Yonatan Stern.
It raised $28.5 million in debt and equity funding from City National Bank, Venrock, Bessemer Venture Partners, Crosslink Capital, Vulcan Capital and Ascent Venture Partners.
It was ranked 35th on a 2013 list of the fastest growing companies in the San Francisco Business Times circulation area, growing its revenue between 2010 and 2012 by about 237 percent to $22.1 million.
Bizo said it is used by more than 750 large global brands and small business marketers for targeted display and retargeting, social advertising, multi-channel nurturing and data solutions.
David Thacker, LinkedIn’s vice president of product, said in a blog that Bizo’s “media solutions” and “multi-channel nurturing” products will be incorporated into the professional networking giant’s portfolio. But he said Bizo’s “data solutions” won’t be.
“Bizo will honor their existing contracts, but LinkedIn data won’t be made available to their grandfathered customers,” Thacker wrote.
The companies have partnered for some time, Bizo CEO Glass wrote in a blog: “LinkedIn’s mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful, while Bizo’s is to help B2B marketers get to the right people. We realized that our respective missions are incredibly well aligned and we believe that combining forces will accelerate our ability to execute against the huge opportunities ahead.”
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