Deal Details: Pointy, a Dublin-founded retail technology start-up is to be acquired by Google in a deal believed to be worth €150m. The deal is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the coming weeks.
Pointy, founded in 2014 by Mark Cummins and Charles Bibby, makes a technology that connects the inventory of local shops to online e-commerce channels. It makes a ‘Pointy Box’ that connects to a shop’s barcode scanner and automatically lists the shop’s products online, optimising them for search engines.
Google swooped when it saw that Pointy was gaining traction with US retailers.
Pointy launched in the United States in 2016, and by the end of 2019 it was being used by over 10,000 U.S. stores, or 1% of U.S. retailers, giving it a lot of runway for growth.
Pointy has raised €16.2m total in funding. Its early investors included the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Bebo, Michael Birch and the co-founder of Transferwise, Taavet Hinrikus. Dublin-based Frontline Ventures, Bono, Richmond Marketing’s Barry Connolly and Alan Metcalfe, tech investor Noel Ruane, Trevor Parsons, co-founder of Irish tech company Logentries, Ed Byrne of Texas-based venture firm Scaleworks, former Amazon exec Tony Killalea, Google Maps co-founder Lars Rasmussen and Jamie Heaslip. It later raised funding from VS firms Polaris, Draper Associates and Vulcan Capital.