Salesforce swallows up challenger RelateIQ

Since it debuted in 2011 RelateIQ has challenged Salesforce’s dominance in sales software by turning salespeople’s data crumbs into gold — but it couldn’t resist Salesforce’s acquisition budget.

Salesforce.com has acquired RelateIQ in a deal that values the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup at roughly $350 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company will become a Salesforce subsidiary.

RelateIQ makes a “relationship intelligence platform” that pulls in data from multiple applications — like LinkedIn, Office 365, and Gmail — to help salespeople stay on top of conversations with their contacts and leads. By grabbing bits of data and piecing them together, the company’s software tries to answer the most important questions for a sales department, like whether a deal is won or lost, or which salesperson should contact a potential customer.

Those questions have historically been difficult for customer relationship management systems to answer, so RelateIQ’s data-driven approach drew a lot of investor interest. The startup had collected $69 million in total venture capital, most recently raising $40 million this March in a funding round led by Redpoint Ventures.

Via Re/code