Microsoft acqui-hires then shuts down a startup that raised $14 million, BlueStripe
Most of the small BlueStripe team will be joining Microsoft, Microsoft would not confirm the number of employees involved, but according to LinkedIn, about 25 people worked there. When we asked for details, Microsoft sent us this statement:
Core members of the BlueStripe team will be transferring to Microsoft. Microsoft is not sharing further details on BlueStripe personnel. BlueStripe brings both a talented set of personnel and a strong set of products.
BlueStripe was launched in 2007 and it raised $13.5 million in three rounds of financing from two investors. Its last fundraise totaled $8 million in 2009. In July, it took on $525,000 in debt financing.
BlueStripe makes a product that lets enterprises watch their applications even as those applications live in multiple places. It's claim to fame is that it can keep track of really detailed information on how an app is doing, a tech it calls FactFinder. That was pretty advanced stuff in 2007, and it's become increasingly important as companies move toward something called "hybrid computing," where they rely on a combination of their own data center and cloud computing.
It's unclear how many customers will be affected by Microsoft's decision to shutter BlueStripe. In 2014, BlueStripe said it had a "record" year and grew its customer base by 38%, but didn't offer an absolute customer number.
There were other indications that BlueStripe had some rocky moments. One of the co-founders, John Bley - who ran the startups original engineering team and helped develop the first product - left the company in 2013. He now works at Oracle. Although a lot of co-founders depart startups after the first few years.
This exit to Microsoft was likely an acqui-hire, meaning it was a soft landing for the employees.
And that's one of the interesting things going on in the enterprise startup world right now. Successful enterprise startups like Slack and Zenefits are raising huge sums of money at astronomical valuations, making them too expensive to acquire.
Meanwhile, other startups can't raise enough capital. That means there are bargains out there for the big tech companies to gobble up.