Groupon is acquiring travel startup Uptake.
Liz Gannes at AllThingsD broke the news. We spoke to a source with knowledge of the deal who confirmed the details of the AllThingsD report. The purchase price was apparently between $10 and $20 million.
Uptake helps users plan their vacations, offering both content on the Uptake website and recommendations from your social graph. Our source says this is a classic “acqhire”, where Groupon is more interested in the staff than it is in the technology — the entire 20-person Uptake team will be joining the Groupon office in Palo Alto where the group-buying can tap into their expertise in travel, as well as their general engineering and local search knowledge. However, none of Uptake’s code will be reused.
Groupon confirmed the deal via email, without offering any details.
“Groupon has acquired Uptake, and we’re excited to continue to build the Palo Alto engineering team with an all-star roster of startup founders and experts in the mobile and social space,” the company said in a statement.
Uptake has raised $14 million; from investors including Trinity Ventures and Shasta Ventures.
[additional reporting by Colleen Taylor]
Uptake is a social travel site helps you decide what to do on your ideal vacation by giving you advice and recommendations from the largest online travel library and the people you trust most. Uptake enables consumers to tap into their preferred source of expertise and recommendations – friends and trusted experts who have been there –to create the perfect trip. Uptake has also built a foundation of the largest structured travel library in the U.S., which offers a...
Groupon features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in more than 565 cities around the world. By promising businesses a minimum number of customers, Groupon can offer deals that aren’t available elsewhere. Groupon brings buyers and sellers together in a fun and collaborative way that offers the consumer an unbeatable deal, and businesses a large number of new customers. To date, it has saved consumers more than $300 million and claims it...
Founded in 1986, Trinity Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm dedicated to partnering with passionate entrepreneurs to transform revolutionary ideas into reality. With over $1 billion under management, Trinity Ventures believes in personal engagement, mutual respect and goal alignment with the entrepreneurs. Trinity focuses on early stage and seed technology investments with particular emphasis on social commerce and entertainment, digital media, Saas, and cloud and infrastructure. Trinity Ventures has invested in such leading companies as Aruba Networks,...
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