While yesterday I discussed consolidation in the technology sales intelligence space, there has been significant consolidation over the past twenty-one months in the broader sales and marketing intelligence space.

Amongst the key transactions in 2017 and 2018:

• Dun & Bradstreet acquiring Avention
• Dun & Bradstreet being taken private by CC Capital and others.
• Moody’s acquiring Bureau van Dijk
• Zoominfo being acquired by Great Hill Partners
• DiscoverOrg acquiring RainKing
• A failed merger between LeadSpace and Radius

While the industry is growing rapidly, several services are being shuttered including Data.com (Salesforce), Hoovers (migrating clients to D&B Hoovers), and Unomy (WeWork).

Tim Baskerville, Chairman of Rhetorik Global, noted that the consolidation dance is likely to continue:

“These days in the data/AI space It’s something like a high school dance. Players on the main dance floor are strutting to prove they’re attractive acquirers, whether it’s a football hero preening in front of envious fans or a second-string guy trying to lure a niche player who has a valuable point solution. The musical chairs game is underway, and everybody except the most nimble fear they’ll be left without a chair when the music stops. The catchword is “scale,” and not many have it. The deals announced recently are a tiny fraction of what’s being discussed out there, and both the money people and the operators are scrambling to figure out who is predator and who is prey. Some will be both. Check back in 24 months and our world will look very different.”

Next week I’ll be discussing the two Technology Sales Intelligence deals (Zoominfo acquiring Datanyze and HG Data acquiring Pivotal iQ).