Asheville tech company Lab Escape acquired

ASHEVILLE – Less than six months after the largest tech company acquisition in Asheville's history, another high-growth startup has followed suit.

Lab Escape, an Asheville-based information technology startup that has been helping companies visualize and discover business data for 12 years, has been acquired by Boston-based Teikametrics.

"We're just one more data point in the maturation of the Asheville IT scene. To have two IT acquisitions within a year is relevant," said Trevor Lohrbeer, the CEO and founder of Lab Escape, who was referencing the $65-million acquision of DoctorDirectory in November and, now, Lab Escape's acquisition. "This is exciting."

Teikametrics, which helps companies that sell their products on Amazon.com with pricing and inventory optimization, made the announcement Tuesday.

"Adding Lab Escape to our team gives us the opportunity to broaden our reach and develop long-term growth outside of the Amazon marketplace," said Alasdair McLean-Foreman, CEO of Teikametrics. "The acquisition of Lab Escape's visual data discovery platform is firmly aligned with our mission to use big data to solve valuable problems."

Teikametrics has more than 30 employees, while Lab Escape had 5 employees at the time of the acquisition.

This is the first acquisition for Teikametrics since its founding in 2012.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

"Acquisition activity is a key indicator for the health of a startup community," said Josh Dorfman, director of entrepreneurship for the Asheville Area Chamber of Commerce. "It demonstrates that startups can overcome all of the hurdles and challenges in the way of getting to scale and becoming attractive for bigger companies to acquire them."

As part of the acquisition, Lohrbeer will be joining the Teikametrics team as chief data scientist.

According to Lohrbeer, who is also the co-founder of the Asheville IT networking group, Meet the Geeks, the time had come to sell his software company.

"The market right now for what we do — visual data analysis or visual data discovery — it's just exploding like wildfire," Lohrbeer said. "One of our competitors, Tableau, went public last year. They have a multibillion dollar vaulation right now. With the amount of money being poured into this (type of technology), there's no way we could effectively compete; and so we had to be acquired. Then the question was to find the right acquirer."

Lohrbeer said the process to find the right fit for his company began last year. He estimates that he reached out to between 200 and 250 companies to gauge their interest regarding a potential acquisition.

In November, Lohrbeer first met with Teikametrics leadership in Boston. In January, Lohrbeer flew back up to Boston to continue the discussions and, by February, the deal was signed.

Teikametrics, which helps its third-party Amazon retailers with repricing and inventory analysis, proved to be the best cultural fit for Lohrbeer and the technology his Asheville company built.

"This was a great cultural fit. I am able to stay in Asheville and they are willing to bring on other developers," Lohrbeer said.

Teikametrics has experienced rapid growth since its founding in 2012, amassing more than 250 clients, including The Vitamin Shoppe, Newbury Comics and Smart Home. Currently, Teikametrics is managing more than $500 million in Amazon revenue, according to a release from the company.

"The fact that you have DoctorDirectory, which was acquired by EveryDay Health in New York and now Lab Escape is being acquired by Teikametrics, with headquarters in Boston, indicates that businesses around the country are taking a hard look at the activity underway in Asheville," Dorfman said.

Going forward, Lohrbeer said he would like to become a resource for other local companies who are either going through an acquisition process or considering it.

In the meantime, Lohrbeer said he thinks Lab Escape's acquisition is the writing on the wall for what will be happening in Asheville's startup scene.

"I know we can expect more acquisition announcements in the coming year," he said.

Going through the acquisition process was a little bit like dating, Lohrbeer said.

"A lot of the same lessons of dating apply in the same way. You really want to make sure you get a good partner," he said. "It takes a while to get comfortable, though. Often what happens is you find a couple of companies that could be a good fit, and you'll be in talks with them for a while until you find the right one."