Privately-held cybersecurity company Bit9 has quietly acquired Objective Logistics, a Boston-based maker of restaurant management software, Fortune has learned.
The deal is effectively an aqui-hire, with around a dozen Objective Logistics employees joining Bit9. Not moving over, however is Objective Logistics founder and CEO Philip Beauregard, who says he’s “retired until further notice.”
“We began exploring strategic options last November,” explains Beauregard, who sold another startup earlier this year. “The restaurant software market just was not shaping up in the way we had expected it to by now… it needs to be more turnkey and a lot of restaurants don’t want to have to interact with it for more than 15 or so minutes each day.”
Beauregard says that Boston-based Objective Logistics has begun winding down its customers, but that the company’s core IP is not included in the sale. “It’s possible we’ll ressurrect it at some point, or maybe not. What was most important here was finding a good new home for our people and return as much capital as possible.”
Objective Logistics raised around $9 million in venture equity and debt funding since 2010, from firms like Atlas Ventures, Google Ventures and NextView Ventures. Its goal was to gamify restaurant waitstaffs, in order to improve performance and increase sales.
Waltham, Mass.-based Bit9 has raised over $100 million, from firms like Atlas, .406 Ventures, Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital. Earlier this year, it acquired Carbon Black.
“This is a team that is very well-versed in cloud software, and it’s terrific for us,” said Bit9 spokesman Kevin Flanagan. “They get to stay together as a unit, and we get a great group of engineers.”
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