SurveyMonkey Acquires Ottawa’s Fluidware

Palo Alto survey giant SurveyMonkey has added to its empire by acquiring Ottawa’s Fluidware, operators of SaaS platforms FluidSurveys and FluidReview.

“For us, joining the SurveyMonkey family is a match made in heaven, and we can’t wait to show you what’s cooking over the next few months,” wrote FluidSurveys’ Rafael Deren in a company blog post.

Fluidware was founded in Ottawa in 2008 by co-founders and CEOs Eli Fathi and Aydin Mirzaee. FluidSurveys is a SaaS survey platform that allows customers to customize surveys while collecting and analyzing data submitted by respondents. FluidReview is a submission evaluation tool, allowing organizations or companies to collect and manage calls for proposals, business plans and scholarship applications.

FluidSurveys’ 75 employees will remain on York Street in Ottawa, and customer experience of FluidSurveys will remain largely the same, according to the company. The acquisition will mean that FluidSurveys customers will have access to an expanded customer support and behind-the-scenes infrasctructure improvement afforded by integration into the SurveyMonkey family. Eventually, FluidSurveys customers will also have access to the same suite of tools available to SurveyMonkey customers, such as benchmarking and market research polling.

FluidSurveys counted among its client base Hewlett-Packard, Groupon, Coca-Cola and Siemens.

Commenting on the acquisition, SurveyMonkey CEO David Golberg said, “They’ve built a great business, but we felt we could help them kind of extend what they’ve built, and for us it’s a great way to expand our international customer base and to add their products, which have some great features and functionality that we don’t have today.”

Fathi and Mirzaee will remain in Ottawa, with Mirzaee in charge of product development and Fathi kept on as a transitional consultant with an eye towards leaving the company at the end of a transition period.

“As part of SurveyMonkey’s unrivaled product portfolio, FluidSurveys and FluidReview will benefit from superior resources and support, including a proven management team with more than 15 years of operating experience,” said Mirzaee. “We will be able to accelerate and scale the development of innovative software solutions that empower customers worldwide.”

Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.