Slyce Acquires Mobile App Agency Drivetrain, Brings on Founder as CTO

Visual product search platform Slyce has acquired Drivetrain Agency.

The deal is worth US-$3.5 million. Drivetrain is a mobile development agency that builds customized apps for enterprise and consumer brands.

As part of the acquisition, the Drivetrain development and engineering team will transfer to Slyce. Drivetrain founder Daniel Grigsby will join the Slyce executive team in the role of Chief Technology Officer.

“I see mobile visual search as the next great opportunity in this field and am therefore immensely excited to be joining Slyce at this point in their expansion,” said Grigsby.

Grigsby was an original founder of Merchant Planet, an e-commerce provider that merged with LinkExchange before its acquisition by Microsoft, as well as payMe, an early competitor to PayPal which was also acquired.

“With the acquisition of the agency and its highly-specialized development and engineering team, Slyce is able to not only widen the scope of its product offering to leading brands and retailers but also, further deepen its technical expertise and capability,” said Slyce CEO Mark Elfenbein.

In September the Calgary-born firm acquired Tel Aviv’s BuyCode for $5 million. BuyCode developed Pounce, an image recognition-based shopping app. Pounce founder and CEO Avital Yachin joined the executive team of Slyce, a Techvibes 20 company.