![\"The](\"https:\/\/smallbiztrends.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/shutterstock_1005619948-1.png\")
\nIn the tech world, companies change hands constantly — it’s hard to keep up!<\/p>\n
\nIn the tech world, companies change hands constantly — it’s hard to keep up!<\/p>\n
I’m proud to say that my first company, WordStream, was on the list of tech acquisitions in 2018.<\/p>\n
After growing it into a full-fledged unicorn<\/a>, I sold WordStream to Gannett for $150 million (here’s the exact story of how I built and sold that business<\/a>).<\/p>\n WordStream was one of many tech companies acquired in 2018.<\/p>\n Read on to discover ten acquisitions that made major headlines this year.<\/p>\n The largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., Gannett Company, acquired my cloud-based SaaS marketing company WordStream for $150 million in July 2018.<\/p>\n WordStream helps businesses of all sizes manage ad spend and maximize their online advertising budget on platforms including Google Ads, Bing, and Facebook.<\/p>\n The company manages approximately one billion dollars in advertising spend for tens of thousands of companies across the world.<\/p>\n This acquisition will empower Gannett to further pursue their digital transformation with data-driven marketing.<\/p>\n WordStream is estimated to generate $55 million in revenue and $16 million in earnings this year.<\/p>\n IT mainstay IBM acquired Red Hat for around $34 billion, making it the biggest business deal involving an open source company yet.<\/p>\n The North Carolina-based company is known for providing open source enterprise software to companies, with Red Hat Enterprise Linux as their main product.<\/p>\n Red Hat is poised to be the first Linux (and open source) company to break the billion-dollar-per-quarter ceiling, especially now with its acquisition by IBM.<\/p>\n The computer technology corporation Oracle bought up Datafox, a startup whose mission is to eliminate grunt work for business professionals.<\/p>\n Most of Datafox’s work is on making artificial intelligence analyze business data to come up with big business predictions that can make a difference.<\/p>\n According to PitchBook, Datafox was valued at $33 million in January 2017.<\/p>\n San Francisco-based cloud communications company Twilio took in SendGrid, a nine-year-old email delivery service company, for $2 billion in stock.<\/p>\n SendGrid was founded by three developers who were seeking a better way for other developers and businesses to send email.<\/p>\n Twilio hopes to integrate SendGrid with their own cloud communications platform to create an all-in-one platform for business growth.<\/p>\n Multimedia software giant Adobe acquired cloud B2B marketing software company Marketo for $4.75 billion.<\/p>\n Adobe has been working on its own cloud solution suite, the Adobe Experience Cloud, for quite some time now, and adding Marketo to that mix may help improve it.<\/p>\n Adobe Experience Cloud’s features combined with Marketo’s lead management and marketing technology from the B2B world can potentially do wonders.<\/p>\n Cisco, one of the biggest names in computer networking, acquired Michigan-based cybersecurity company Duo Security for $2.35 billion.<\/p>\n Duo is known for unified access security and multi-factor authentication in the cloud.<\/p>\n The acquisition is said to be about bolstering Cisco’s intent-based networking strategy by extending it into multi-cloud environments.<\/p>\n Telecommunication giant AT&T bought San Mateo-based cybersecurity company AlienVault for an as-of-yet undisclosed amount to launch its own standalone cybersecurity business unit.<\/p>\n Since 2007, AlienVault has developed various tools and platforms like its Unified Security Management and Open Threat Exchange for detecting and addressing security threats.<\/p>\n Being one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the world, AT&T can always use help in boosting its own security.<\/p>\n German conglomerate Siemens bought cloud company Mendix for $730 million to accelerate their research and development.<\/p>\n Mendix developed its low-code software platform to provide tools for building, testing, deploying, and iterating applications.<\/p>\n Siemens is looking to use this platform to create more products more seamlessly, among other things.<\/p>\n The San Francisco-based DocuSign acquired Chicago-based cloud company SpringCM for $220 million in cash.<\/p>\n DocuSign is known for providing secure solutions for electronic exchanges of contracts and signed documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n By bringing SpringCM under its wing, DocuSign plans to modernize its Systems of Agreement.<\/p>\n Last but not least in our list of 2018 tech acquisitions is Salesforce. Salesforce acquired Israel-based cloud artificial intelligence company Datorama for more than $800 million.<\/p>\n Datorama uses AI and the cloud for marketing intelligence and analytics to help businesses improve how they propagate their brands.<\/p>\n This acquisition is a good fit for Salesforce, combining their sales and marketing software with the power of the Marketing Cloud.<\/p>\n Republished by permission. Original here<\/a>.<\/small><\/em><\/p>\n Photo via Shutterstock<\/a><\/small><\/em><\/p>\n This article, “10 Amazing Tech Acquisitions in 2018 – and What Entrepreneurs can Learn from Them<\/a>” was first published on Small Business Trends<\/a><\/p>\n Take a look at the most important acquisitions in tech which took place in 2018.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-startup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46535"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46535\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businessnewsbox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tech Acquisitions 2018<\/h2>\n
1. Gannett Acquired WordStream<\/h3>\n
2. IBM Acquired Red Hat<\/h3>\n
3. Oracle Acquired Datafox<\/h3>\n
4. Twilio Acquired Sendgrid<\/h3>\n
5. Adobe Acquired Marketo<\/h3>\n
6. Cisco Acquired Duo Security<\/h3>\n
7. AT&T Acquired AlienVault<\/h3>\n
8. Siemens Acquired Mendix<\/h3>\n
9. DocuSign Acquired SpringCM<\/h3>\n
10. Salesforce Acquired Datorama<\/h3>\n
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