Canadian Firm Tiny Incorporates Prolific App Building Company, HappyFunCorp, in a $30 Million Acquisition Deal

With the tech industry continually tightening, companies are resorting to M&A and consolidation strategies to maintain relevance. In a recent development, HappyFunCorp, a renowned design and product engineering firm, was acquired by Canadian-based conglomerate Tiny for a reported $30 million. The acquisition not only signifies a trend but likewise illuminates the increasingly prominent role of tech-ecosystem organisations.

HappyFunCorp, a product engineering firm reputed for designing and building apps, has a commendable clientele featuring tech industry big-wigs like Disney, Amazon, Twitter, and Apple. The Brooklyn-based firm is set to continue operations independently after the acquisition, with a tighter collaborative relationship with the parent company, Tiny.

Tiny, a publicly traded company based in Canada, is valued at roughly $500 million in the current market. The firm has created an impressive portfolio through opportune acquisitions of companies that focus on providing an array of front and back-end design and product services for tech companies and internet-based businesses. The HappyFunCorp deal adds further weight to Tiny's remarkable catalog.

Companies under the Tiny umbrella include the e-commerce technology heavyweight, WeCommerce; Dribbble, an online designer's haven for work-sharing and job sourcing; and Flow, essential for task and project management. Interestingly, the co-founder of Tiny, Andrew Wilkinson, is also MetaLab's co-founder, a primary company under the Tiny establishment.

Post-acquisition, HappyFunCorp will synergize its operations with other firms under Tiny to continue providing back-end support to prominent tech organisations. While these companies have commendable in-house operations, they often outsource projects that fall outside their conventional workflow. These projects, if developed in-house, could present distractions and strain resources, especially when they're in their early stages or when their success likelihood is still under evaluation.

Combined, the Tiny organisation boasts an impressive customer range, servicing a long tail of small online businesses and executing significant projects for some of the tech industry's biggest names, like Amazon, Facebook/Meta, Twitter, Disney, Samsung, and Apple.

Narratives of successful projects stem from both ends of this spectrum, with one memorable tale being that of MetaLab's transformation of a struggling startup's vague concept into a massively successful app known as Slack.

Founded in 2009, HappyFunCorp has a vast portfolio of high-profile customers. Like the other companies under Tiny, it has been bootstrapped and profitable to date, boasting revenues of $12 million in 2022, with a positive growth forecast for the current year. The acquisition will see the existing management team, comprising co-CEOs Ben Schippers, Holly Zappa, and COO Robb Chen-Ware, remain at the helm of the company.

The acquisition is significant in a variety of and illuminates a group of companies projected to command a prominent role in the tech ecosystem's future. This role has changed drastically over the last decade, as pointed out by Schippers.

As companies aim for future growth and scale, they continue to develop new products and concepts, despite current-industry uncertainties and challenging forecasts. Schippers posited that cost consolidation is bound to drive many companies to a "near shore" model focused on R&D in economies like Costa Rica and other Latin American nations, where work can be executed at a fraction of the cost. This transition reflects the current direction of the tech industry's market.

The trend might be an opportunity for no-code web, mobile and backend applications like AppMaster to shine. AppMaster allows customers visually create applications in a fast, cost-effective way eliminating the need for traditional coding and high development costs.