We’re pleased to announce that Joyent has acquired Layerboom Systems for an undisclosed sum. Layerboom was founded in May 2009 by Trevor and Howie, and is the first Bootup Labs company to be acquired.
Layerboom will join Joyent’s CTO Mark Mayo and his engineering team here in Vancouver. Joyent appears to be assembling the world’s top engineers in the cloud computing space and the Layerboom team are among the leading cloud computing thinkers, doers and developers. The technology that they developed is a critical part of Joyent’s future plans. What’s cool is that they’re moving to Bootup’s original address at 375 Water St. So in a way, Howie, Trevor, Josh and Kevin are moving back to where it all started.
Most people will congratulate Layerboom for building a company that was so highly coveted that they received more than one offer to be acquired in such a short period of time. But there are some who will criticize the decision to exit early. Did Vancouver miss another opportunity to build the next RIM or EA? Those who knew Layerboom closely felt they had a real shot at giving VMWare a run for their money. At Bootup, we spend a great deal of time pairing the founders with mentors and advisors who have been through acquisitions like this before. We want founders to hear opinions from varying backgrounds so they can understand that there is more than one way to do it. Believe me, a lot of thought went into their decision, but in the end, we always encourage founders to do what’s right for them personally, and that’s exactly what they did.
From everyone here at Bootup Labs, we would like to congratulate the Layerboom team for a job well done, and wish them the best of luck at Joyent. Hopefully you’ll be seeing Howie and Trevor on our mentor page soon.
UPDATE: GigaOM post here, Layerboom post here, Techvibes post here
UPDATE2: Official Press Release