Private equity firm GTCR has agreed to purchase a majority stake in Fort Worth, Texas-based Simpli.fi, a provider of a programmatic platform for local advertising. The financial terms of the deal, which involved sellers Contour Venture Partners and Frontier Capital, were not disclosed.
GTCR, one of Chicago’s largest private equity firms, announced news of the transaction on Thursday, indicating that the deal is set to close late this month. As part of the deal, Simpli.fi’s management team, including co-founders Frost Prioleau and Paul Harrison, will remain in charge of the company’s operations.
The startup, founded in 2010, had reportedly been in talks with GTCR for several years, yet in the past did not meet the private equity firm’s investment criteria based on size and profit. After a period of consistent growth and the development of more differentiated capabilities, Simpli.fi grew enough to become a fit as GTCR plans to drive the firm to its next stage of growth.
Simpli.fi’s solutions, which harness “unstructured data” stemming from sources such as emails, tweets, videos and audio files, have been leveraged to supercharge over 50,000 marketing campaigns. With backing from GTCR, the company will look for growth opportunities including possible acquisitions of smaller competitors.
The demand side platform (DS) which transforms unstructured data elements to valuable information in order to aid in decision making, touts a 242% compound annual growth rate. The firm has raised a total of $22.3 million from investors since its founding, with its latest Series B round led by Frontier Capital in December 2013 amounting to $16 million.
