This is the software rollup firm’s fourth American acquisition over the past five years.
Victoria, BC-based software rollup company Redbrick has added Paved, a New York City-based newsletter advertising platform, to its portfolio for an undisclosed amount.
According to Redbrick, Paved marks its fourth major acquisition in the past five years. Through its platform, Paved connects newsletter creators with advertisers, matching businesses like Uber, DoorDash, and Salesforce with 253 million newsletter subscribers across more than 3,000 publishers like Paved clients The New York Times, NBC, Bloomberg, and TechCrunch.
Redbrick acquired Paved because email is here to stay, as an intimate way to connect with an audience, Redbrick CMO Marco Pimentel told BetaKit in an interview.
“What gets us really excited is that there is still some technical unlocking in this space to make it easier to buy ads on email, to be a bit more performance driven, and be that [much] more technically advanced,” Pimentel said. “[Paved currently has] a lot of subscribers that they’re able to email into, and they have advertisers, but we see a really great opportunity to grow it.”
Paved and its team will continue operating under their own brand within Redbrick, Paved founder and CEO John McLaughlin said in a blog post, adding that the company now expects to grow its team from 15 employees to 50 by the end of the year.
Redbrick’s recent major purchases show it has a penchant for acquiring American companies. Rebrick bought its Minneapolis, Minn.-based website builder Leadpages in 2020, its Indianapolis, Ind.-based automated email marketing solution Delivra in 2022, and its New York City-based video-creation platform Animoto in 2023.
Pimentel said that Redbrick’s American acquisition spree is a coincidence, adding that it has attempted Canadian acquisitions that didn’t get over the finish line, and that Redbrick heavily considers cultural and logistical considerations, such as time zones, when making deals.
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However, Canadian companies scooping up American ones is something Pimentel said he likes to “see once in a while.”
“I think that doesn’t happen as often as most of the US companies buying up Canadian companies,” he said.
That trend has indeed been evident so far this year: Toronto-based companies Payfare, Carbon6 Technologies, and Street Context have all been acquired by American companies. American private equity firm Primus Capital also recently acquired a majority stake in Calgary FinTech startup Reach.
Redbrick founder and CEO Tobyn Sowden was one of the regional winners of the Ernst & Young (EY) Entrepreneur Of The Year awards last year, representing the Pacific region. While software portfolio companies aren’t a novel concept in Canada, Redbrick positions itself as focused on acquiring digital solutions that help entrepreneurs, a strategy that led to $100 million in annualized revenues in 2023, according to EY.
Feature image courtesy John Schnobrich via Unsplash.
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