Kindful, a Nashville-based software company serving nonprofits, has purchased well-known Nashville entrepreneur Nicholas Holland's buzzy startup, Populr.me.
Holland declined to disclose the exact purchase price, but said it was seven figures. The deal, which the two companies began talking about in November, closed last week.
Populr, which lets users create single-page websites, will continue to grow on its own while also being integrated into the Kindful platform, said Holland and Kindful founder and CEO Jeremy Bolls.
Kindful offers its nonprofit clients an automated fundraising tool and a customer relationship management system for donor management, Bolls said. The company already had been interested in building a Web editor like Populr when he and Holland met for coffee and realized the best way to grow both companies would be to bring them together.
With Populr, Bolls said, Kindful clients can easily incorporate existing Kindful tools into customizable Web pages for campaigns, events and other fundraising opportunities.
"We have always seen a lot of value in what the Populr team is building," Bolls said. "It allows our Kindful clients to have functionality that they've never had access to before."
Kindful was not the only interested suitor for Populr, Holland said. In fact, the company was "days away" from being purchased by Massachusetts-based HubSpot when Kindful came in and made the highest offer.
The fact that Kindful was in Nashville "didn't hurt," Holland said.
“One of the reasons I wanted to start Populr was to show that you could start a non-health care dot-com in Nashville and find success, both in development talent, investment and by getting notoriety outside of the Nashville market," Holland said. "And we were able to pull that off.”
But Holland said he recognized his own limitations to find and grow global online traction, which is why an acquisition made sense.
"Populr needed to be part of a larger platform," he said.
Populr's early backers included Bullpen Ventures, a group that includes Stuart McWhorter, Mark Montgomery, Joe Galante and Steve Turner. In total, Holland said, the company had 16 local investors along with prestigious California accelerator 500 Startups, where the startup was accepted in 2013.
Now that the deal has closed, Holland said plans to take some time to "re-engage" with the Nashville entrepreneurial community while also working with his original venture, Nashville interactive agency CentreSource. One Populr team member will stay on with Kindful to help with the transitions, while Holland's co-founders, Jared Scheel and Daniel Nelson, have joined other companies.
Like Holland, Bolls, who worked for Rivals.com in the early 2000s, said he's "bullish" on the Nashville market's ability to grow outside of the traditionally dominant health care industry and sees a deal of this nature between two Nashville companies as a validation of sorts.
The addition of Populr is not a change in direction for Kindful, Bolls said, but simply an extension of its mission as the company looks to grow. With 17 team members and both domestic and international clients, Bolls said he expects to add at least 10 employees in the next eight months.
“We’re looking for talent and looking to expand our team," Bolls said. "We have intentions not only to grow the Kindful platform but also to keep the Populr story alive.”
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