Newcastle-based chartered accountancy and business advisory firm UNW has advised Receptive Software Limited on its sale to business software firm, Pendo, which is headquartered in the United States.
The acquisition was completed in April 2019, and will see the co-founders of Receptive, Hannah Chaplin (former CEO) and Dan Dukeson (former CTO), retain important roles within the company, as Director of Product Management and Director of Engineering, respectively. The pair will lead the Receptive development team and will continue to grow the product as part of Pendo. The sale also allows Pendo and Receptive to offer a complete integrated platform that unifies the tools that product-led organisations need to deliver better product experiences.
Founded in 2015, Receptive is the leading product demand intelligence platform. It helps business-to-business product managers to collect, measure, and understand the product feedback and feature requests they receive from customers, teams, and the market. Furthermore, the organisation also helps communicate product road-maps to multiple stakeholders. This allows companies to invest their time and resources into innovation and their core activities. In turn, this enables high quality customer services and helps to drive business.
Pendo, which is based in North Carolina, is a product cloud company that is backed by a variety of investors, including Battery Ventures and Spark Capital. Since being founded in 2013, the business has so far raised $106m in funds, and has attracted around 1,000 customers. Prior to the acquisition, Pendo conducted a review of other products in the market, and chose to acquire Receptive due to a match in strategic vision, product strategy, and overall company culture.
Speaking about the acquisition, Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of Pendo, stated: “Receptive is the perfect complement to our vision and company culture. By adding intelligence to the Pendo product cloud, product-led organisations will have a 360-degree view of the user, the account, and the revenue impact of product decisions. This is a game changer for product teams.”
Hannah Chaplin, co-founder and CEO of Receptive, echoed Todd’s views of the acquisition, saying: “Pendo and Receptive have a rare and powerful vision match, where qualitative feedback meets quantitative analytics for unprecedented insight into product impact and customer success. We couldn’t be more excited about the opportunity to help bring to life such a big, bold vision for product-led organisations.”
Pendo will expand Receptive’s headquarters in Sheffield, and designate it as its European development centre. This will grow Pendo’s presence in the United Kingdom beyond its recently launched London office, and the organisation plans to open three requisitions for additional developers.
Throughout the process, UNW LLP provided support to Receptive on its sale. The deal was led by John Healey, corporate finance partner at the firm, who stated: “We are delighted to have advised Receptive on this transaction, and have enjoyed working with such an innovative, forward-thinking business. It’s also great to see continued investment into the North of England.”
Dan Dukeson, co-founder and Director of Engineering at Receptive, said: “UNW and in particular John Healey were a great help as we worked together on the sale of Receptive to Pendo. As a company founder, it was important to have people on our team that understood the journey, and who could bring a lot of perspective and solid advice.”
