Thinkfuse, a Seattle-based startup that allows companies to send regular progress reports to managers, executives and other stakeholders, just announced that it has been acquired by Salesforce.com. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Thinkfuse describes itself as “an enterprise software-as-a-service provider that turns status reports into a powerful business tool.” The service is shutting down completely on July 25, 2012 and current users will have to export all their data by that time. Thinkfuse recommends its users to move to Mailchimp.
Thinkfuse received its angel funding from TechStars Seattle in 2010 and famously landed about $500,000 in angel funding in 2011 by “hanging around” during Y Combinator’s demo day in 2011. Among the investors in the company are Ali and Hadi Partovi, SV Angel, Founder’s Co-op and Scott Banister. The company, which was founded by a group of former Google and Microsoft employees, launched at TechCrunch Disrupt New York in 2011. The complete Thinkfuse team is joining Salesforce and will work out of the company’s Seattle office.
Here is how our own Kim-Mai Cutler described how the service works/worked earlier this year: “A manager or CEO can sign up with Thinkfuse and then ask their employees to file reports every week by e-mail. It’s elegant because it doesn’t require too much behavior change. There’s no entirely new system to learn and it slides right into e-mail.”
Here is the full announcement:
Today, we are excited to share that the Thinkfuse team will be joining salesforce.com, where we’ll advance our mission to promote open communication and transparency in the workplace.
Thinkfuse will cease its operation and service effective July 25, 2012. Subsequently, all customer data will be deleted.
Please click on the link provided https://www.thinkfuse.com/export/ to request your data. Once you have requested your data, we will send a separate email with an additional link that will help you download your account data.
Your user data must be downloaded no later than July 25, 2012.
If you use Thinkfuse to send investor and advisor updates, Mailchimp is a great tool to manage a large email distribution list.
To all of our users, thank you for using Thinkfuse! We’ve been on an incredible journey thanks to your comments, feedback, and support. We started Thinkfuse with a simple idea to help teams communicate more effectively. We now have an amazing opportunity to pursue that passion on a much larger scale at salesforce.com – one of the leading companies in the space.
If you have any questions or need help with downloading your user data, please email support@thinkfuse.com.
Thank you,
Aydin, Brandon, Steve, Mark, and James