Perseverance Pays Off: Congratulations to Parse.ly on its Acquisition by WordPress VIP

The Blumberg Capital Investment Team

We are excited to share that portfolio company Parse.ly has been acquired by WordPress VIP, an organization within Automattic’s suite of brands. With this exit, Parse.ly and WPVIP will work together to modernize, change and accelerate the content industry.

We first met co-founders Sachin Kamdar and Andrew Montalenti through Roy Lowrence, Blumberg Capital advisor and CIO Council member, who mentored them as data science students at NYU. Their initial pitch and vision for the business was to provide analytics for the rapidly emerging domain of social media in real-time for publishers and television. Since then, Sachin and Andrew have impressed us with their ingenuity, flexibility, humility, perseverance and capital efficiency.

Following our initial investment in 2010, Parse.ly consistently showcased the power of predictive analytics to influence digital content and change journalism. They have worked with leading organizations across media, financial services, entertainment, technology, professional services, non-profits and more. Some of their customers include The Wall Street Journal, NBC and Hearst.

Since their inception (due in part to a scarcity of available technical talent), Parse.ly chose the unusual strategy of deploying a completely distributed engineering workforce by engaging developers across Eastern Europe, Latin America and North America. This enabled them to build a highly competent, low-cost engineering team that was able to work ‘following the sun’ on an agile, rapid turnaround schedule. A decade later, when the pandemic forced most companies to scramble to organize for remote work, Parse.ly was ahead of the curve with a smooth workflow that didn’t miss a beat. They had already developed the tools and procedures needed to stay aligned despite the geographic, linguistic and time zone dispersion. They have even advised some of our other portfolio companies on how to manage the challenges of a distributed team.

Blumberg Capital has supported Parse.ly through each stage of growth. We are proud to have been a part of their journey through strategic guidance, key introductions, recruiting and human resources support.

We are thrilled for Sachin, Andrew and the rest of the Parse.ly team. Over the past eleven years, we witnessed the Parse.ly team learn and grow and through their tremendous success, the team has remained humble. We can’t wait to see what they do next!

Learn more about the acquisition and what it means for Parse.ly here.