We spoke to some of the investors getting richer off of Google Cloud's $2.6 billion acquisition of data analytics company Looker
- On Thursday, Google Cloud announced its plans to acquire data-analytics company Looker for $2.6 billion.
- This is Google's largest acquisition since it purchased smart home device maker Nest for $3.2 billion in January 2014.
- Prior to the acquisition, Looker was valued at $1.6 billion and had raised over $280 million in venture funding from Kleiner Perkins, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, First Round Capital, Goldman Sachs, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital), and IVP.
- We spoke to investors with several of these firms for their perspectives on the deal.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Google Cloud announced Thursday it was acquiring data-analytics company Looker for $2.6 billion - $1 billion more than its most recent valuation it held just six months prior. The deal is Google's largest since it purchased smart home device manufacturer Nest for $3.2 billion in January 2014.
Looker, which allows companies to analyze and define data across multiple teams, was most recently valued at $1.6 billion in December after it raised $103 million in Series E funding, according to Pitchbook data.
In total, the startup raised a little over $280 million from Kleiner Perkins, Meritech Capital Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, First Round Capital, The Goldman Sachs Group, CapitalG, and IVP, among others, since it was founded in 2012. Today, many of these investors are seeing a lucrative payday.
"I fell out of my chair when I saw the tech because it's just so hard to build," Redpoint Ventures partner and former Looker board member Tomasz Tunguz told Business Insider. "It was the dog days of August, and I was asking my network of friends in the startup ecosystem about it, and they all said it completely changed how they ran their business."
Redpoint Ventures led Looker's $16 million Series A in August 2013 with $15 million in funding. The round came with a pre-money valuation of $64 million. It's reasonable to assume that with such a hefty stake early on, Redpoint stands to make a tidy profit from its investment once the deal closes later this year.
"[Looker founder] Lloyd [Tabb] and the Looker team have this mission of empowering people to use data at scale to improve their lives and Google's mission is basically the same," Tunguz told Business Insider. "Looker built its data collection model on BitFury and Snowflake, so I'm excited to see the next-gen data stack come together now that they have access to Google's data set."
Redpoint also participated in Looker's $30 million Series B in 2015, which Meritech Capital Partners led. The round was tied to a pre-money valuation of $150 million, according to Pitchbook.
"In the crowded analytics space Looker stood out for its product architecture (in particular the metadata layer), its extreme level of customer passion (customers often described Looker as valuable as oxygen), and its strong and unique company culture. Lloyd Tabb, Frank Bien and the entire team have built a remarkable business - and there's plenty more to come," Meritech Venture partner Rob Ward told Business Insider over email.
First Round Capital was one of the earliest outside backers for Looker and led its $2 million Seed round in April 2013. That first round valued the company at just $14 million pre-money, a figure that increased more than 400% by the company's Series A just four months later.
"When Looker (at the time the company was actually called Llooker) was coming into our partner meeting to pitch us, I called their customer references-and I was blown away by just how much these early customers loved the product," First Round Capital partner Bill Trenchard told Business Insider via email. "This handful of early customers was so receptive, they referred dozens of other potential customers to Looker. Their enthusiasm started a word-of-mouth virality that we rarely see with an enterprise product."
Looker will continue to operate out of its existing offices in Santa Cruz, California - a move that Tunguz is likely to appreciate. He points to Google's success in acquiring and running YouTube, which remained at its San Bruno, California, offices post-acquisition, as the ideal model for Looker moving forward.
"They don't need any advice from me, I was the one that was learning from them," Tunguz said.
Kleiner Perkins declined to comment, on the basis that partner John Doerr sits on the board of Alphabet, Google's parent company.