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Multifactor Authentication Specialist Toopher Acquired by Salesforce

Multifactor Authentication Specialist Toopher Acquired by Salesforce

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(Left to right): Toopher co-founders CTO Evan Grim and CEO Josh Alexander demonstrated their multifactor authentication technology at FinovateFall 2014.

When word hit the Finovate office that Austin, Texas-based, multifactor authentication specialist Toopher had agreed to be acquired by Salesforce, we all had the same question in mind:

Will Salesforce get the drone too?

What’s certain is that the purchase of Toopher will give the cloud-computing innovator a powerful solution to offer customers looking for multifactor authentication.

Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Including $200k in debt financing raised in March, Toopher’s total is $3 million.

According to the Austin Business Journal, Toopher’s seven workers will remain in Austin as employees of Salesforce. The Journal also notes that conversations between Toopher and Salesforce began a year ago, with “acquisition discussions” starting in 2015. The company has discontinued selling its own products as it makes the transition (although Toopher’s”pre-acquisition” developer portal remains open).

Writing at the Toopher blog, CEO Josh Alexander explains the move in his typically colorful fashion:

We here at Toopher have a standard question we ask new Toopherarians: ‘If you could have a superpower, what would you choose?’ Even with the normal, attractive archetypes, the most common response from a Toopherarian is to be able to provide even greater levels of security without affecting the user experience.

And with the Salesforce acquisition, Toopher now considers itself appropriately “superpowered.”

Toopher was founded in September 2011 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. The company demoed its technology at both FinovateFall 2014 and FinovateFall 2013.