Meltwater Buys Business Info Firm Owler

Media intelligence and social analytics group Meltwater B.V. has agreed the acquisition of ten-year-old Silicon Valley-based business information crowd-sourcing company Owler for $18.9m in cash and $5.6m shares.

Owler, founded by Tim Harsch and Jim Fowler in 2011, claims to be the second largest online business community in the world after LinkedIn. Its community of five million active business professionals contribute up-to-date business information on its 14 million company profiles. Contributors send information including private company revenue estimates, strength of competitors, CEO approval ratings, employee headcount, growth trends, corporate hierarchy, rate of innovation, diversity, culture and employee trust. The company raised an undisclosed amount of Series B-1 funding three years ago, at which time its total raised to date was said to be more than $26m.

Owler's Executive team and all staff will join social media analyst Meltwater once the acquisition is complete. This will be Norway-based Meltwater's third buy since listing on Euronext Growth Oslo in December 2020.

John Box, CEO of Meltwater says Owler 'crowdsources information that would otherwise be impossible to find'. He continues: 'Combining this proprietary information from Owler with the insights that Meltwater is able to extract from online news and social media will differentiate Meltwater's product in the market and bring great value to our 27,000 customers globally. It not only strengthens our offering in use cases we serve today, such as brand management and competitive intelligence, but opens up new and exciting opportunities in areas such as sales intelligence and risk management, where Owler is already present'.

Owler CEO Harsch says the two firms' combined data repository will be 'the most comprehensive in the industry', adding: 'by joining Meltwater's artificial intelligence expertise with Owler's community and crowdsourcing capabilities, Meltwater's global customer base will unlock new markets and new opportunities to combine business information with news and social media content from around the world'.

Meltwater, now headquartered in San Francisco, and with 1,700 staff spread across 50 offices on six continents, is online at www.meltwater.com .