{"id":3976,"date":"2017-03-09T15:34:55","date_gmt":"2017-03-09T15:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/amazons-aws-acquired-meeting-productivity-startup-do-to-expand-chime.html"},"modified":"2017-03-09T15:34:55","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T15:34:55","slug":"amazons-aws-acquired-meeting-productivity-startup-do-to-expand-chime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/amazons-aws-acquired-meeting-productivity-startup-do-to-expand-chime.html","title":{"rendered":"Amazon\u2019s AWS acquired meeting productivity startup Do to expand Chime"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Amazon has quietly made one more acquisition to build out the\u00a0productivity services on its cloud platform AWS. The company has acquired\u00a0Do.com<\/a>, a startup that had built\u00a0a platform to make meetings more productive by doing things like managing notes in preparation\u00a0for them, and creating\u00a0reports for those who were not there, as well as organising the meetings themselves.\u00a0Amazon is rolling\u00a0it into\u00a0Chime<\/a>, a\u00a0new communications suite<\/a> for businesses that it launched last month and offers\u00a0via AWS.<\/p>\n

On February 15 (two days after Chime launched),\u00a0Do announced<\/a>\u00a0it had been acquired and would close its service \u2014 including its web, mobile and Apple Watch apps \u2014\u00a0at the end of the month. Do didn\u2019t name a buyer, but a reader tipped us off to the\u00a0company\u2019s profile on LinkedIn<\/a>, which notes that the startup is \u201cnow a part of Amazon Chime.\u201d Other Do\u00a0staff also note the acquisition<\/a> on their profiles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

We have reached out to several people at Amazon, as well as Do.com\u2019s founder and CEO Jason Shah,\u00a0who now says he is\u00a0a\u00a0product manager for Chime<\/a>, for a formal confirmation. We\u00a0will update this as we learn more. UPDATE BELOW.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not clear what parts of Do.com are being used by AWS (although another former employee now works in engineering at Amazon<\/a>) \u2014 or what price Amazon paid.<\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if there were others having discussions.\u00a0Do had\u00a0raised only $2.4 million<\/a>, but from a very long list of well-connected investors<\/a>. They included\u00a0Salesforce, which has a penchant<\/a> for products<\/a>\u00a0with short names<\/a> and, like Amazon, is working hard to expand<\/a> the amount of value-added services it offers to users on its platform. (And here\u2019s one for the tech brand watchers: Salesforce even once had its own task management service called Do.com, which it shut down in 2013<\/a>. Maybe offering up the URL was its investment in the startup.)<\/p>\n

Amazon\u2019s AWS \u2014 which posted $3.53 billion in revenues<\/a> last quarter \u2014 has been on a mini buying spree of late to expand the services it offers on top of its cloud infrastructure \u2014 specifically in areas like productivity and security.<\/p>\n

Many of these are smart moves on the part of AWS: they\u00a0can help it expand revenues per user and margins on basic cloud services, which Amazon prices\u00a0lower to compete against others like Google, Microsoft and Rackspace for what is essentially a commoditized product.<\/p>\n

This is the second acquisition we\u2019ve been able to identify that Amazon has made to build Chime. The first was Biba, which it acquired last year<\/a> for the videoconferencing piece of the service. That deal was never confirmed by Amazon directly at the time, although we found a lot of proof, and today the Biba site redirects its users to Chime<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And on Monday of this week, it was revealed that AWS had\u00a0acquired Thinkbox Software<\/a>, which makes tools\u00a0for professional video editors. This capitalised on the fact that video is already\u00a0a signficant part of the content already stored and distributed via AWS.<\/p>\n

Other acquisitions that we may see turned into products down the line include cloud security services, by way of\u00a0Harvest.ai<\/a>, another acquisition we uncovered in January. And Cloud9, which was acquired in July 2016<\/a> and has already said that it is building developer tools for AWS to work between web and mobile.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Do.com was the first startup<\/a> to come out of\u00a0San Francisco-based Sherpa Foundry<\/a>, an incubator-style outfit launched by the same people behind Sherpa Capital<\/a>, Shervin Pishevar and Scott Stanford. Sherpa Foundry is run as a separate entity<\/a>, focused on working with\u00a0corporate clients to help them connect to and integrate with\u00a0new\u00a0startups (both those in Sherpa Capital\u2019s portfolio and outside it).<\/p>\n

Although the Do acquisition by Amazon might not have fit into the bigger Sherpa Foundry mission, its placement could have helped Do\u00a0pick up more large customers.<\/p>\n

In 2016, when Do.com was expanding to Android, Shah said\u00a0in an email to us that the service had been used for more than 5 million meetings and it had 25,000 customers. The company had also built integrations\u00a0with Slack, Zapier, Google Apps, Microsoft Exchange and Office 365, and Evernote.<\/p>\n

Again, it\u2019s not clear which parts of Do are going into Chime, but when you consider the\u00a0groundwork, mechanics\u00a0and general concept and aspirations behind the startup, it\u2019s clear that Amazon now has\u00a0a few angles to work into its own scaled-up\u00a0ambitions.<\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong>: Since publishing this article yesterday, we\u2019ve had some developments.<\/p>\n

An AWS spokesperson acknowledged my (Ingrid\u2019s) email by phone but declined to give a comment.<\/p>\n

Also, looks like AWS and Do.com have tried to put the genie back into the bottle. Do has\u00a0removed its blog post announcing the closure and acquisition, as well as the note on its LinkedIn page (and the pages of employees who\u00a0also noted the acquisition) about becoming a part of Amazon\u2019s Chime. The mobile and web apps are still off the app stores.<\/p>\n

You can see a screen shot above\u00a0of Do.com\u2019s LinkedIn page; and,\u00a0because the Internet is not great\u00a0at letting the world\u00a0forget things, you can find a cached version of the blog post\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting too that although we try every time<\/em>, we\u00a0never had formal confirmations about Biba, or Harvest.ai, or actually quite a lot of our Amazon scoops that have proven to be correct over time. \u00af_(\u30c4)_\/\u00af<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Hinterhaus Productions<\/a>\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/b9_czgwtjz8\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amazon has quietly made one more acquisition to build out the\u00a0productivity services on its cloud platform AWS. The company has acquired\u00a0Do.com, a startup that had built\u00a0a platform to make meetings <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-3976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t