Compass acquired a more than 20-person technical team behind the e-commerce app Spring in a move to accelerate the growth of the company’s technology platform and offerings.
“The team at Spring built a service-oriented brand and technology platform that attracted 2,000 of today’s top retailers,” Ori Allon, Compass founder and executive chairman said in a release. “At Compass, we believe in investing in top talent which is why we welcome the opportunity to bring members of the Spring team on board.”
Allon added, “Our new Compass colleagues will execute against and innovate on ways to build the end-to-end real estate platform with real-time insights and technologies that will redefine the industry.”
Compass technical staff, after the acquisition, now numbers more than 120 employees. Satwik Seshasai, Spring’s chief technology officer, will now serve as Compass’ senior director of growth infrastructure.
The new team will join Compass’ existing engineers and technical employees to help accelerate the company’s technology roadmap and develop additional technologies that enhance the agent experience. Compass currently has its own agent-facing customer relationship management tool, equipped with an in-house marketing center and over the summer unveiled new high-tech signage it plans to sell to its agents.
“Spring was founded on the belief that consumers were looking for a better online shopping experience, a single destination where they could find all their favorite brands,” Seshasai, said. “In a similar way, Compass is embracing the digital future and revolutionizing a legacy industry with agent satisfaction at its focus. I am thrilled to help Compass grow its technology platform as it continues to be a leading disruptor in the real estate industry.”
In a separate transaction, according to TechCrunch, Spring was acquired by ShopRunner, another e-commerce platform. Since the two were similar companies, ShopRunner didn’t have a need for the team that joined Compass.
Compass recently received an additional $400 million in venture capital money and said it planned to use part of that money to double down on its technology development with the ultimate goal of building one end-to-end platform for the real estate industry.
Compass had entered into a deal to license its tech platform to its first outside brokerage over the summer, but that deal fell apart.