Thinkfuse, one of the original startups to move through the TechStars Seattle program, is being acquired by Salseforce.com in a deal of undisclosed size. This appears to be a true “acquihire” where larger entities gobble up the team, not the product.
As part of the deal, the Thinkfuse service will be shut down on July 25th and the company is recommending that users of the service, an online collaboration tool that allowed people to easily share progress reports, move to Mailchimp.
“To all of our users, thank you for using Thinkfuse! We’ve been on an incredible journey thanks to your comments, feedback, and support,” the company wrote in a blog post. “We started Thinkfuse with a simple idea to help teams communicate more effectively. We now have an amazing opportunity to pursue that passion on a much larger scale at salesforce.com – one of the leading companies in the space.”
Thinkfuse, which was led by former Market Leader and iLike product manager Aydin Ghajar and former Microsoft software engineers Brandon Bloom and Steve Krenzel, raised $500,000 in startup capital from Founder’s Co-op; Ali and Hadi Partovi; SV Angel and others.
Interestingly, the deal comes on the same day that Microsoft announced its $1.2 billion acquisition of Yammer, which also offers business collaboration tools along the lines of Thinkfuse.
“Communication and collaboration is a busy space, but that’s because there’s money in it,” Bloom told GeekWire earlier this year.
Salesforce.com has been on a bit of an acquisition binge recently, buying Buddy Media and Stypi last month. The company operates a small development office in Seattle where the entire Thinkfuse team will be based.
“We looked at the major players in the landscape and our possible paths forward,” Krenzel tells GeekWire. “Salesforce is a great company doing big things in this space right now and after speaking with them, it was an immediate fit. We felt joining them would be the best possible outcome for the company.”
