The deal is for $125M
in cash plus up to $50M in potential future earn outs, and is expected to close
late in Q2 2018.
Founded in 2010 Main Street
Hub has raised a total of $93M in debt and equity financing from Silicon Valley
Bank, Vista Equity Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners and other investors.
For a monthly fee Main
Street Hub handles all aspects of a small business’ online presence
including marketing automation, CRM, social media, reputation management
and mobile, web and email marketing.
But of course these
days the most important part of a business’ online presence is
their social media activity, which is where Main Street Hub
shines. The company has a team of photographers, writers, designers and
marketers to create and manage content on all of a business’ social pages.
If you’ve ever seen a
small businesses’ social media page you know that they generally come in two
shapes and sizes. The first, and much more common, is when pages were created
years ago but lack any significant activity or posts because most business
owners either don’t have the bandwidth or don’t know how to actively manage a
social media profile.
The second and more
rare is an actively managed page that posts updates very frequently and
regularly engages with customers. The result is usually tons of additional
traffic, attention, and customer interaction – all the benefits that come along
with having an active profile.
So that’s where Main
Street Hub comes in. It’s essentially a turn key solution for business owners
and operators that don’t have the time to manage their social media profile but
want the benefits that come with an active page. The company has around
10,000 customers ranging from restaurants to auto repair shop and everything in
between.
Of course GoDaddy also
serves small businesses – they have over 17M small business customers who use
one or more of GoDaddy’s products. But while GoDaddy has a professional web
services division that helps with building websites and managing SEO for small
businesses, they’ve never had an offering related to managing social media
activity for small businesses – which makes this deal a perfect match.
Plus there is also
already significant overlap between the two companies’ customer bases,
explained Lauren Antonoff, Senior Vice President of Presence and Commerce at
GoDaddy. After the deal closes GoDaddy will offer Main Street Hub’s
services directly to GoDaddy customers, meaning a GoDaddy customer will soon be
able to pay for someone to handle their business’ website creation, email
marketing and now social media platforms.
For now Main Street
Hub will continue to run just like it did before the acquisition, and remain
based in Austin ,
with Main Street Hub co-CEOs and co-founders Matt Stuart and Andrew Allison
joining GoDaddy in leadership positions.
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