Nokia has been on an acquisition tear lately, albeit mostly small deals (Plum, Cellity and Bit-Side all this year). A source close to the deal says that they’ve just made one more acquisition: boutique travel social network Dopplr, headquartered in London.
The purchase price, we’ve heard, is between €10 million and €15 million ($15 million – $22 million based on current exchange rates). Dopplr cofounder and CEO Marko Ahtisaari was previously the Director of Design Strategy at Nokia.
We first covered Dopplr in 2007 when it closed on seed funding. The site has never grown to huge usage, but core users are passionate about the service, which lets them share travel plans with friends. And they’ve supposedly raised just €1.25 million or so in total funding.
Dopplr was about to close a new round of funding when Nokia swooped in for the buy.
Update: TechCrunch Europe has more analysis.
big congrats to marko and the team!
Will they relocate to Berlin now? I heard that Nokia concentrates all these social startup acquisitions here.
Well done, Marko! Nice one for the London start-up community, too.
Great Deal!
All the best from http://www.spirofrog.de team
Fantastic news
well done to Lisa, Marko and Matt.
Nokia lining up all the bases.
Congrats to the team! Dopplr is a superb service.
“And they’ve supposedly raised just €1.25 or so in total funding”.
Wow – €1.25 (shurly shome mistake?)
My mummy gave me £1.50 today to spend at the sweety shop.
i just doubled over laughing
‘gratz to all at Dopplr; but “€1.25 or so in total funding” – I have that much on my desk. There’s a “m” missing, surely?
this is a great fit for Nokia. I wonder if there is overlap with Plazes which was acquired previously?
Congrats to the team, wonderful news and well deserved. They are a hugely respected and liked UK company, nice to see another success.
congrats. but i have a bad feeling of whats going to happen to dopplr
Agreed.
Nokia also acquired German startup Plazes last year. I wonder how their growing hand of location services will fit together in the long run.
..and I can’t believe I actually broke down to post this tidbit on techcrunch.
Plazes users and Dopplr users seem to fit together nicely, I wonder if some of the other location services like Rummble, Whrrl, Loopt, etc. could also be targets?
Why is a niche travel planning social network valued at between 10-15 million euro?
Because the founder is former Nokia exec.
it is
Possibly Nokia likes Dopplr’s user demographics? They’re more upscale than most travel sites.
Exactly what makes Dopplr an UK based startup?
“The Dopplr service is owned and operated by Dopplr Ltd. in Helsinki, Finland.”
http://www.dopp....com/main/about
The ‘Dopplr has offices in London’s “Silicon Roundabout” district’ bit?
Gosh, I gave some punk at the train station €2 and now I realize I could have had a startup for that…
[qutote]Why is a niche travel planning social network valued at between 10-15 million euro?[/quote]
Exactly my question.
Wow, congrats.
jesus, how come people are so stoked about this? this is really not a good deal for any of the investors or stakeholders.
this is a present to nokia and some nice pr.
Interesting…
Nicely done, Dopplr!
Interesting…will TripIt be next?
If and only if the travel portion of dopplr is improved will this work….
dopplr is Great in terms of looks and add on’s e.g. facebook app works and fire eagle intergration
I use it all the time BUT
it’s a record of my trips (mostly for the reports)
NOT a planning tool…
I use tripit for that !
(because it has the plans@tripit.com and prodices a nice list…)
they need to provide a nice list of the activity… al tripit
simple clone this one portion and allow me to add meeting’s address’s etc and DONE it will be the best
right now I can’t plan meetings or trips even to the theatre/gig’s at all its VERY bad at that
one feature (even incomplete) and they will have a killer product
regards
John Jones
That 1.25 million euro funding amount doesn’t sound right. The numbers don’t add up since I watch dopplr closely and I’m pretty sure they had way more funding than that. There were some people with very deep pockets bankrolling that company…
I have a hunch this isn’t a successful exit of dopplr, this announcement sounds very similar to a company I worked with who bottomed out and fortunately had a high-profile exec who was able to leverage connections to get a decent liquidation, spin it right for TC and save face.
Any time you get a press release for an acquisition and they don’t disclose the exact totals there is a likelyhood that it was scooped up in a fire sale…
Big sign this wasn’t a win for Dopplr – no announcement on the blog. None of the employees are bragging about it on Twitter. Not even the CEO.
I would love to hear the real story…
oops just realized the story wasn’t from a press release. well either way i would be skeptical, it doesn’t sound like any of the stakeholders are exactly giddy at the moment
Hi Ron
If the rumours are correct (and still not seen anything official) then it is a fair price at a tough time within the travel sector.
I have been watching WAYN, TripIt and Dopplr for a while now and it has always been a classic case of very webby people (with web VCs) up against travel people (with travel VCs).
More thoughts along those lines on a little post I have written about Dopplr
Dopplr sells, confusion on whether good or bad
Congratualtions guys!
We’ve heard many sources state that the rumour is a hoax. You can read more about it on ArcticStartup:
http://www.arct...a-false-rumour/
Congrats! Welcome to the Nokia family!
If this is true it’s great news for Dooplr , not least in current climate, so congrats to Marko, Lisa and team
Re: niche community, I imagine that’s exactly why this is valuable to Nokia. A niche group of loyal members is surely more valuable than a mass of non interested users?
Nokia is clueless ?
Or is it family ties?
Eh, guys, how about verifying the story before running with it?
http://www.arct...a-false-rumour/
Congratulations to Matt B, Matt Jones, Lisa and Marko – really well deserved.
congrats Dopplr, i think Nokia will add Dopplr to its Social networking strategy.
I think Nokia is going to buy a lot more companies, maybe wcities or michelin for location based content. It would make sense as well.
Maybe they should buy wcities or michelin for the travel content as well.
Pocket Life – http://www.pocketlife.com could be next – the blog states they won the Nokia innovation challenge this year. I am sure they are talking