Two visual marketing startups are teaming up — Olapic is announcing that it has acquired Piqora.
Both companies promise to help businesses promote themselves through user-generated photos, but Olapic co-founder and CEO Pau Sabria said his company’s strength has been on Instagram (which was its initial focus), while Piqora’s has been on Pinterest (ditto). So he sees the organizations as “very complementary,” while also praising Piqora’s technology and its relationship with Pinterest.
The plan is to integrate Piqora’s main products — including its content scheduling tools, its analytics tools and its Instagram shopping product Tapshop — into the Olapic platform, where they will likely be rebranded.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Piqora has raised more than $11 million in funding from investors, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Freestyle Capital and Baseline Ventures. New York-based Olapic says it will fold Piqora’s San Mateo, Calif. team into its own operations, although it’s not saying how many team members specifically are joining.
Piqora CEO Sharad Verma, meanwhile, will serve in an advisory role during the transition before moving on to his next venture. Verma said one reason an acquisition makes sense is the consolidation in the marketing industry, with “the need to reduce the number of vendors, the friction and platform silos.”
As for Sabria, he predicted that the need for Olapic’s platform will only grow.
“Whether it’s seen on Pinterest, powers an ad or shows up on a website, what you will see more and more, thanks to Olapic, is that content generated by users is helping brands be much more symbiotic with their consumers,” he said.
