Startup launch service LaunchRock just announced that it has acquired Giftiki, a startup that allows friends to pool their money to buy more valuable gifts.
The financial terms aren’t being disclosed, but LaunchRock co-founder and CEO Jameson Detweiler tells me that the Giftiki service will be shut down. Judging from the tongue-in-cheek press release (embedded below), this sounds like a classic acqui-hire, with LaunchRock acquiring the company for its team, not its product.
“We’re always on the lookout for people who build amazing and engaging product experiences,” Detweiler says in the release. “After using Giftiki and partying with the team, I knew that these were some of the best brogrammers I’d ever met. Mostly though, we just wanted to create the most epic team photo ever.”
That photo is sitting at the top of this post, so you can judge for yourself whether the two companies actually succeeded in their goal. Me, I think it’s a real contender.
Giftiki raised a $1 million round last year from Tim Draper, Crosslink Capital, GoldHill Capital, and Transmedia Capital. It looks like co-founder and CEO Justin Stanislaw left the company a few months ago.
LaunchRock, meanwhile, has raised $800,000 from a long list of investors. It’s best known as the startup behind a bunch of other startups’ launch pages (i.e., “Startup X is going to be awesome. Sign up here to be notified when it launches.”) However, Detweiler has been telling me that the company is turning itself into a broader user acquisition platform, and he says the four Giftiki team members will be helping to build the new products:
At LaunchRock we’ve helped tens of thousands of companies get over four million users before they even launch, and they keep telling us how much it sucks to have to stop using us once they open up to the public. The Giftiki crew is helping us change that, and soon enough, LaunchRock is going to help you be awesome at user acquisition and retention after you’ve launched. Our mission at LaunchRock is to help you get those first 10,000 users and beyond.
You can find a sign-up page for LaunchRock’s upcoming services here.
PRESS RELEASE: LaunchRock Acquires Giftiki
LaunchRock helps you setup a viral launching soon page in minutes. It was launched out of Philadelphia’s Startup Weekend. Create a viral “Launching Soon” landing page in minutes. Collect interest, increase sharing, & build your audience. LaunchRock pages help you incentivize and reward users for telling others about your project through email & their social networks.
Giftiki is defining a new social commerce platform with the development of its collaborative gifting engine. It allows users to send small amounts of money that contributes to a collective fund, empowering the recipient to buy something they actually want. Giftiki’s services expand beyond birthdays to any gifting situation- holidays, graduations, fundraising and weddings and baby showers.
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