This week, Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN) agreed to buy Adku, which is based in Silicon Valley. The price tag was not disclosed, but reports put the cost at around $10 million.
Adku has been in “stealth mode,” which means little information has been released on it. But at least a few interesting details are available. First, Adku’s team includes former employees at Google (NASDAQ:GOOG). What’s more, the investors are top players like Greylock Partners, Battery Ventures and True Ventures.
In terms of technology, Adku has been focused on “Big Data.” This is an emerging area in which companies try to find patterns in Internet traffic.
For Groupon, this could prove extremely useful. With many sour on daily deals’ future prospects, Groupon needs to better monetize its massive user base, and personalizing its offers should help.
Tom Taulli runs the InvestorPlace blog IPO Playbook, a site dedicated to the hottest news and rumors about initial public offerings. He also is the author of “The Complete M&A Handbook”, “All About Short Selling” and “All About Commodities.” Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli or reach him via email. As of this writing, he did not own a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
A long-time follower of the IPO scene, back in 1999 Tom started one of the first sites in the space called WebIPO. It was a place where investors got research as well as access to deals for the dot-com boom. Tom also wrote the top-selling book, Investing in IPOs. In it, he covers all the aspects of analyzing an IPO, such as reading the prospectus, detecting the risk factors and understanding some of the arcane regulations. But don’t worry — if that process is too intimidating for you, thankfully Tom will do the legwork for you right here in the IPO Playbook blog.
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