Groupon Acquires Startup Campfire Labs

Groupon, the newly public daily deals site, has just acquired a Silicon Valley startup called Campfire Labs.

Image: Glassdoor

No one seems to be quite sure what purpose Campfire Labs will serve for Groupon, but the daily deal site giant has confirmed that it acquired the Silicon Valley startup for an undisclosed sum.

The acquisition, first reported Wednesday by TechCrunch through "unofficial channels," was confirmed today by the Washington Post, which spoke to both companies.

Groupon's communications director Julie Mossler said Campfire is already doing work for the deal site and that the company is "thrilled to have them aboard" going into the New Year.

"The Campfire team have already become valuable contributors to Groupon's social-media capabilities," she told the Post via email. Further details on those capabilities were not provided.

Campfire Labs was founded by husband-and-wife duo Naveen Koorakula, the company's CEO, and his wife, Sakina Arsiwala. They come with big tech credentials and big investment backers, including YouTube cofounder Steve Chen. Arsiwala was previously with Yahoo, Inktomi, and Powerset and was the founder of search technology company Picch, while Koorakula served five years as head of international for YouTube and two years as product lead for Google's international search and search quality.

Campfire Labs's debut product, Slice, was given a test run at Kenyon College in Ohio in September, where it was pitched as a Web-based service that lets users "slice" friends into groups and that works with existing social-media sites like Facebook and email to offer features such as chat, calendar, and "virtual DJ" tools—or at least that's what it was. Now, both the Slice and the Campfire Labs websites are offline.

The deal for Campfire follows another Groupon acquisition in September of a company called OpenCal, which helps the deal company's merchants schedule deals.