CarGurus to make stock market debut
CarGurus, the Cambridge-based online car shopping company, is set to go public Thursday with an initial public offering of stock that could raise $162 million. Nasdaq said the shares will be traded on its Global Select market under the ticker symbol CARG. One of the nation’s most visited online automotive marketplaces, CarGurus said its revenue for the first half of 2017 was $143.3 million, a 70 percent increase over the same period last year. The results have led to a profit — with net incomes of $8.6 million through June 30 this year. [The Boston Globe]
Cambridge-based GrapeVine acquires ReadyCart
Content creators just got a new way to make money: Grapevine, a Cambridge-based influencer marketing platform for YouTube, announced that is has acquired ReadyCart this week. ReadyCart is an affiliate marketing service based out of Tennessee that lets creators use platforms like YouTube to build custom storefronts that sell products featured in their videos. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. [BostInno]
Spiro Technologies raises $3M to help salespeople close deals
Spiro Technologies pulled in a $3M investment led by Geekdom Fund this week. The Boston-based startup uses artificial intelligence to create, update and manage sales professionals’ pipelines automatically. The company said it will use the new investment to expand its sales, marketing and product development teams. [Built In Boston]
Clearsurance raises $4M Series A led by CEO and founder
Clearsurance LLC, an insurance tech startup based in Newburyport, raised a $4 million Series A round led by its founder and CEO, Michael Crowe. The company collects user reviews of insurance companies, and was founded by Crowe in 2016. California-based Davis Capital Partners also participated in the round. Clearsurance is kind of like Yelp for the insurance industry, and has collected 50,000 user reviews of more than 350 insurance providers for the rental, home and auto markets. [Boston Business Journal]
Techstars alum indico raises $1.5M and appoints new CEO
Boston-based machine learning startup indico raised $1.5 million in funding led by Boston venture capital firm .406 Ventures and appointed a new CEO, Tom Wilde. Wilde, a serial executive and entrepreneur in Boston, was named as indico’s new CEO last Thursday, taking over the role from co-founder Slater Victoroff, who will now act as CTO and focus on developing indico’s platform and product. Wilde was most recently chief product officer for Norwegian tech company Cxense. He said his main role at indico will be to work on the go-to-market strategy and commercial side of indico, which offers a platform to large enterprises for using machine learning algorithms to sort through large sets of unstructured data and glean emerging trends from them. [BostInno]
