Branch Metrics Beefs Up Talent For Deep Mobile Linking Through ClassOwl Acquisition

Screen Shot 2015-08-07 at 2.07.43 PMPalo Alto’s Branch Metrics, which just raised $15 million earlier this year, is beefing up its talent bench through acquiring education startup ClassOwl.

Three employees from ClassOwl, which was founded in 2011 by Sam Purtill and Julienne Lam, are heading over to Branch. The company didn’t disclose the acquisition price. ClassOwl had raised about $900,000 from investors, including First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund and Stanford’s StartX.

This is Branch’s first deal. They’re trying to bring in talent to grow a set of deep-linking tools that could underpin better search technologies inside of mobile apps. The company recently raised a fresh round of funding led by NEA, TriplePoint Capital President Ben Narasin, Pejman Mar Ventures, Zach Coelius, Cowboy Ventures, and the firm TriplePoint Capital back in the spring.

With the new round of funding, you’d bet that they’d be looking to staff up with additional engineering and product talent.

The company has built a set of linking solutions that touch marketing, referrals and sharing content between apps. On the flip side of that, they have analytics covering paid downloads and attribution, so app makers can see which channels and methods work the best for pushing downloads. Their customers include Hotel Tonight, iHeartRadio, Instacart and Flipboard.