Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is planning to acquire app developer Tomfoolery for around $16 million, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal citing two sources who claim to be aware of the dealings. According to the sources, the discussions are nearing the closing level, but not yet finalized.
Tomfoolery executives to join Yahoo
After the acquisition, Tomfoolery Chief executive Kakul Srivastava will join Yahoo. Kakul previously worked with Yahoo for seven years and helped the company running its Flickr.
Tomfoolery was established by Kakul Srivastava and Sol Lipman, a former AOL vice president, in 2012 to design an app for the workplace that would help co-workers socialize and collaborate with friends similar to Facebook. Anchor is their first software program allowing colleagues to share files and discuss work projects using simple apps for the iPhone and Android.
Tomfoolery has raised $1.7 million from investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Morado Venture Partners. App user can create groups for different threads for instance what to eat for lunch, progress on a particular project etc. The app helps a user to upload the photos along with inputting the text, which would earn him the points. Anchor is also compatible with other popular apps such as Box, Dropbox and Evernote.
Mayer hiring boomerangs
Since the advent of Marissa Mayer in Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), there have been many acquisitions done by the company. Yahoo has acquired the start-ups in the early stage of its development, closed the apps of the acquired companies, and admitted engineers and designers to create new mobile services for Yahoo.
Marissa Mayer has been keen to acquire and hire the professionals, who were once with the company. She famously termed them as boomerangs. Around 10% of the professionals hired by Yahoo were boomerangs, said Mayer at an event in September. She also called back Jeff Bonforte, a former Yahoo executive, who now runs email and other communication products.
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) is also keen towards designing mobile apps for casual users and business users. Acquisition made by Yahoo since the arrival of Marisa Mayer has been primarily in the area of mobile. However, Yahoo still needs to penetrate deeper in the app platform to compete with peers.
It is not yet clear that if Yahoo would run Anchor or close the app. There was no comment from spokeswoman of Yahoo.
