Yammer, the enterprise social networking company, has agreed to be acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. The acquisition will help Microsoft fill in its Office product suite with social networking and collaboration tools and it's also defensive in nature in that these types of companies are likely to become competitive to the Office suite of products. It's good news to enterprise technology firms because it helps to ratify the business model and valuations, and its good for venture capital firms as it shows there's a lucrative exit for these deals.
Yammer's last venture round was in February of this year, raising $85 million at a rumored valuation of $500-$600 million, according to an article in TechCrunch. The February financing brought total venture investment in Yammer to $142 million. Assuming the rumored valuation range was correct, this is a nice (and fast) payday for the February round investors.
Venture capital investors in Yammer include Charles River, CrunchFund, DFJ Growth, Emergence Capital, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Meritech and USVP.
Link to the WSJ.com story: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303822204577467312505454118-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwNDExNDQyWj.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
Link to the TechCrunch story:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/enterprise-social-networking-platform-yammer-raises-85m-from-dfj-growth-khosla-and-others/
Yammer's last venture round was in February of this year, raising $85 million at a rumored valuation of $500-$600 million, according to an article in TechCrunch. The February financing brought total venture investment in Yammer to $142 million. Assuming the rumored valuation range was correct, this is a nice (and fast) payday for the February round investors.
Venture capital investors in Yammer include Charles River, CrunchFund, DFJ Growth, Emergence Capital, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Meritech and USVP.
Link to the WSJ.com story: http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052702303822204577467312505454118-lMyQjAxMTAyMDEwNDExNDQyWj.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
Link to the TechCrunch story:
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/enterprise-social-networking-platform-yammer-raises-85m-from-dfj-growth-khosla-and-others/
