• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 11, 2021

Stirista gained access to more data with the purchase of Venture Development Center (VDC). The announcement made Wednesday is the evolution of a partnership that began years ago. It's the company's third acquisition in the past 10 months. 

“The first two were more to acquire the technology,” said Stirista CEO Ajay Gupta. “The first two were early-stage tech startups. This one is a little different. It’s a more established company. All three are aligned with the goal of becoming more than an offline data company, where we got our start.”

VDC’s data and its relationships with companies such as Accenture, Asurion, TransUnion, Warner Media and others played a major part in the decision. So did the employees and Matthew Staudt, who has held the CEO role since 2018. Staudt will join Stirista as chief strategy officer. 

Fourteen employees from VDC will join Stirista. Gupta declined to provide specifics about the price of the acquisition, but he did say Stirista bought VDC for a price in the “low eight figures.”

Companies with an expertise working with first-party and second-party data will do much better in the industry as privacy and data regulations continue to roll out in the United States, Gupta said.

The two companies have been working together for the past eight years. “We knew when they hired a banker last year the company was up for sale,” Gupta said. “The banker reached out when they were going on the market because of our long-term relationship.”

In the next three to 12 months, VDC's data marketplace will be integrated into Stirista's platform and services.

The best little-known fact about VDC, he said: Marketers typically view the company as a traditional “data guy.” When Gupta first met the group at VDC, they worked with Acxiom and others. Now, they work with many large brands.

Founded in 1996 by the late Dr. Charles Stryker, a data-marketing pioneer, New Jersey-based VDC supports data sourcing, data management and data monetization. The company helps clients determine data strategies and campaigns that help acquire new customers.