Wave Accounting Acquires Montreal-Based Startup
Last week, LW client, VURU, was bought by Wave Accounting. The company’s technology, along with its co-founders Yoseph West and Cameron Howieson, will be moving to Wave’s headquarters in Toronto.
The companies will continue to work as separate applications for the immediate future with West and Howieson running the day-to-day operations at Vuru. The two will also be bringing their expertise and guidance to some new product innovations on the Wave side said James Lochrie, Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of Wave.
Vuru, which was part of Montreal accelerator FounderFuel’s first cohort last fall, provides free online tools to analyze financial and stock market data in an easy to understand manner.
According to Lochrie, “There was a cultural fit between Vuru and Wave. [Vuru was] taking the complexity out of investments the same way we do around accounting.”
Wave offers free accounting software targeted at small business owners as well as payroll software for a fee. Launched in November 2010, the company has since grown to about 65 employees. Its business model is based on leveraging its user base for targeted advertising as well as group-buying opportunities. According to Lochrie, it has in the range of 350,000 users of its free accounting software.
The company closed $12M in series B financing this past May and although acquisitions were not specifically top of mind at the time, Lochrie said the company will pursue them where it makes sense to expand its product.
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