FullContact Buys Cobook, Adds Address-Book Apps and 1M Users
Denver-based startup FullContact announced today that it has acquired Cobook, a Latvia-based company that's created a popular contact management app for Apple users. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Context & Ripple Effects
FullContact's purchase of Cobook lands in a contact-management market that has been consolidating for two years: LinkedIn bought the Gmail plugin startup Rapportive in February 2012 (LinkedIn's Rapportive acquisition), Xobni raised $10 million that same month, and Brewster spent mid-2012 pitching itself as a rebuilt, social address book (Brewster's address-book ambitions). The pattern is clear — standalone address-book apps keep getting absorbed by companies building contact platforms.
The deal also gives FullContact an Apple-side distribution foothold at a moment when Apple's position is strengthening: NPD put Apple's US smartphone share at 42% in Q4 2013, up from 35% a year earlier, ahead of Samsung. A Latvia-built app with about 1 million users on iOS is a cheap way to buy reach there, and the pickup across TechCrunch, ArcticStartup, App Advice and investor Brad Feld's blog shows how far a small cross-border exit travels.
First-order effects
- FullContact gains roughly 1 million registered users and an established Apple-focused contact app overnight, converting Cobook's installed base into top-of-funnel for its Denver-based contact platform.
- Cobook's founders and team shift from running an independent Latvian app shop to working inside a US company, with terms undisclosed — typical of sub-$100M tuck-in exits.
Second-order effects
- Rivals still standing alone — Brewster most prominently — face the same endgame pressure: once LinkedIn/Rapportive and now FullContact/Cobook set the M&A template, investors get harder to convince and acquirers get more interested.
- Competing contact platforms must match the mobile-first, Apple-native distribution Cobook brings, pushing spend toward iOS app development and user acquisition rather than web-only contact tools.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, independent address-book apps stop being venture-scale businesses and become feature acquisitions feeding consolidated contact-graph platforms that own identity data across networks.
- Cross-border tuck-ins like this one — Eastern European product teams acquired for users and engineering rather than revenue — point to a structural route for Baltic-region startup exits into US acquirers.
The trend: Contact and identity-graph startups are exiting via acquisition as standalone address-book apps consolidate into platform-owned contact infrastructures.