Ukrainian startup Newzmate is acquired by the American company Piano Software, Inc., the international provider of solutions for the media business headquartered in 1 World Center, New York. In 2017 Piano entered Inc 5000 ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America, at 440th place, and showed a growth of 1153% over 3 years. The price of the acquisition is not disclosed.
“Over the past year and a half, we discussed the possibility of selling with three companies, two in the United States, one in Singapore,” says Alexey Chapko, the CEO and co-founder of Newzmate. “We chose Piano primarily because we found a great fit market, product vision, values and processes.”
The service for content marketing automation developed by Newzmate will become a part of the Piano product line and will be called Piano ESP.
“Piano is already rapidly changing as a result of our work with Newzmate. Our technical roadmap across the company has changed direction, as we all see the benefit of making their messaging and content intelligence a core part of our services. With Newzmate as the foundation, we believe we can create the best tool on the market in this area, and we are focusing our global resources on doing so,” said Trevor Kaufman, the CEO of Piano.
The Newzmate office in Kyiv will become the representative office of Piano in Ukraine. The CEO and co-founder of the startup, Alexei Chapko, will lead the Ukrainian office of Piano in Kyiv as a general manager and take the position of Piano's vice president of sales in Eastern Europe and Asia. CTO and co-founder of Newzmate Dmytro Shandyba will continue to lead the product development as lead architect, as well as be engaged in other developments across the company.
Newzmate employees remain working in the Piano office in Ukraine. The startup team at the time of the deal in September this year consisted of 9 employees, today there are 12, and in the nearest future it is planned to vastly expand the team primarily with technical specialists. “We also maintain all of our relationships with existing customers and as part of Piano we will provide them with a wider range of products and services,” notes Aleхey Chapko.
Bas Godska, a serial angel investor and early backer of Newzmate, said: “I am very pleased that Alexey and Dmytro, and their great team joined forces with a high growth international player like Piano. This deal brings good returns to Newzmate’s existing investors with an additional possibility to maximize future returns in this excitingly innovative sector.”
The service, developed by Newzmate, fully automates online media communication with readers, helping to personalize reader experience, make communication with users more individual, and increase revenue by an average of 80%. At the time of the deal, the solution was used by more than 60 online media in 10 countries in America, Europe, Asia and Africa with a total audience of 300 million readers. In 2018, the company tripled its revenue compared to last year.
About Newzmate
Newzmate is a Ukrainian-Polish startup, SaaS platform for content marketing automation for news and media companies. The mission of Newzmate is to change the way media communicates with the audience through personalized and relevant content delivery to every reader. Founded in 2013 by two Ukrainians - Aleksey Chapko (CEO) and Dmytro Shandyba (CTO). Investors: Happy Farm, Xevin Investments, Bas Godska, Alexander Baryakh, Microsoft Bizspark. Total investment (including service-type): $ 850,000.
About Piano
Piano is the digital content monetization and audience intelligence platform for the world’s largest and most sophisticated media companies. The company’s award-winning, high-performance enterprise platform includes a subscription commerce engine (Piano VX), a customer experience toolkit (Piano Composer), a user management system (Piano ID), and an intelligent email personalization and content recommendations tool (Piano ESP) that serve as a comprehensive product suite for media businesses across digital platforms. Piano clients include NBC Universal, Business Insider, Bloomberg, AOL, Gatehouse, Hearst, Bonnier, Digiday, The Postmedia Network, Condé Nast, Grupo Abril, and over 1,300 other media outlets.
