Updated at 7:40 a.m. with comments from Tippr CEO Martin Tobias.
Tippr, the heavily-funded Seattle daily deals platform, has been acquired in a deal of undisclosed size by Atlanta’s nCrowd.
Kara Swisher at All Things D reports that the acquisition comes amid a “tough environment” for daily deal sites, including larger rivals such as Groupon and Living Social.
Originally started under the name Kashless, Tippr went on to raise more than $10 million from RRE Ventures and others.
Via email, Tippr CEO Martin Tobias cited the adoption of Tippr’s platform by more than 200 brands, including Microsoft, NBC, Fox, Univision, and Belo, in addition to supporting its own brands, Tippr.com and Groupalicious.
“After three years of intense activity and competition very few deal brands have turned a profit and we determined the market for the software platform to an unprofitable industry was too small for our efforts,” he says. “After an extensive process, we met the team at nCrowd and were very impressed with their growth, team, and profitable approach to the market.”
Tobias is a former Microsoft exec and former CEO of Imperium Renewables and Loudeye. He’s currently on a road trip on his Harley Davidson and notes that “freeing up my time to ride my motorcycle is the best aspect of the deal for me personally.”
nCrowd also operates sites such as HalfOffDepot.com and CrowdSavings.com, and founder Brian Conley tells All Things D that the acquisition will allow it to “feature quality local offers from New York to Honolulu and most major points between.”
Tippr laid off about 25 staffers last year as part of a larger restructuring. After the cutbacks, it employed about 45 people.
Previously on GeekWire: Tippr buys DealPop social buying site from WhitePages
