Human, the Dutch activity tracking startup based in San Francisco, has been acquihired by US company Mapbox. After Silk, it's the second Dutch startup in a short time to be swallowed.
The team of five will now join Mapbox, the startup announced in a blog post. Under the wings of Mapbox, Human will continue to operate as a stand-alone app to track activities.
The people at Human note that with the acquisition/acquihire, they will continue to protect your privacy – something Mapbox is also very keen on. Mapbox is a Washington-based mapping platform for developers. In their own words, they "do the geo stuff so developers can focus on building their app."
Human was founded in 2012 by Renato Valdes Olmos and Paul Veugen. Veugen, CEO since 2014, previously also founded Usabilla and will now join the Mapbox team. Valdes Olmos since 2014 was also head of design at US startup Honor – he will not join the Mapbox team.
Human acquihire
Human is the second Dutch startup in a short time to be (possibly) acquihired. Last week Silk was clearly acquihired by Peter Thiel's Palantir. Paul Veugen rather talks about 'joining', he said in a comment on HackerNews: "We chose the term "join" because it really feels like we're joining forces. One of the reasons why are so excited about this is the cultural fit and shared vision between both teams."
Eric Gundersen, CEO of Mapbox, said in a blogpost: "What the Human team has built is nothing short of amazing – their data visualizations and maps showcase its global pool of Human activity. This perspective on data is clutch as we expand our mobile play and turn anonymized aggregated data into a real-time updating map." It is made perfectly clear why Human continues as a standalone app: "We love it and love the community."
Image: Human