Business social network PartnerUp acquired by Deluxe Corp.

July 30, 2008 | Anthony Ha | Comments | |

PartnerUp, a social network for entrepreneurs, has been acquired by Deluxe Corp. for an undisclosed amount.

The two businesses seem like a good fit. PartnerUp’s goal is to help entrepreneurs connect with other business owners, find candidates for their executive teams (hence the sponsored posts from PartnerUp that you see every week on VentureBeat) and also locate real estate and service providers. Although Deluxe is best known as a check printer, it has refocused on small business services (mainly printing) as the use of paper checks declines. And both companies are based in Minnesota — PartnerUp in Minneappolis, Deluxe in St. Paul.

The companies say Deluxe can promote PartnerUp membership to its small business customers, while PartnerUp members can use Deluxe’s services. PartnerUp was founded in 2005, and it’s not clear how successful the networking site has been since it launched in 2007 — the company will only say that it has “thousands” of members. It’s privately financed without venture backing.

We last wrote about PartnerUp because of a list that the company compiled of 2007 acquisitions. Looks like PartnerUp will be adding itself to this year’s list.

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About the Author, Anthony Ha

Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on enterprise technology, cloud computing, and tech policy. Before joining VentureBeat in 2008, Anthony worked at the Hollister Free Lance, where he won awards from the California Newspaper Publishers Association for breaking news coverage and writing. He attended Stanford University and now lives in San Francisco. Reach him at anthony@venturebeat.com. You can also follow Anthony on Twitter.

  • Humphrey Bogus
    Don't you mean, "PartnerUp, a VentureBeat sponsor?" Seems like a pretty basic disclosure.
  • Uh, Humphrey, I think you missed reading this line: "(hence the sponsored posts from PartnerUp that you see every week on VentureBeat)"
  • shafqat
    I have to agree here with Humphrey. Disclosures are something you don't want to mess around with. No question that author intended to disclose, but surely an outright one line disclosure statement leaves no ambiguity.
  • I don't understand what the ambiguity is. I agree that disclosures aren't something you want to mess around with, but I'm not sure how anyone could read this article without realizing that PartnerUp has been a VentureBeat sponsor.

    Also, whenever possible this is how VentureBeat mentions disclosures -- we work it into the text of the article itself, rather than just slapping it on as a separate paragraph. See our coverage of Federated Media, for example. Not saying that you can't criticize our practices, just giving some context here.
  • Shafqat and Humphrey, the onus is on you to explain how the words "sponsored posts" can be construed to mean anything other than that they have a sponsor relationship with us.

    Like Anthony said, we're totally open to criticism -- but we need to understand the criticism to understand where we can improve.
  • Humphrey Bogus
    Sorry, I must have missed the disclosure the first time I read it through. Didn't mean to cause such a kerfuffle...

    I think the story as written is fine. I guess I just expected to see it more in the format like the WSJ does it--as soon as a related company is mentioned, the exact relationship is noted.

    For instance, from http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB12106346...
    "Many online sleuths start by signing up for an account on social-networking sites like Facebook Inc. and News Corp.'s MySpace, where they can search for individuals by name. (News Corp. is the publisher of The Wall Street Journal.)"
  • Humphrey, yeah, I get where you're coming from, it took me a while to get used to VentureBeat style too. The reasoning here is that on first reference, it's more relevant to explain what the company does, then soon afterwards mention that also, the company sponsors posts on VentureBeat. So I get to put the disclosure in really early (the third sentence) without having a stick a big ugly "Disclosure: VentureBeat publishes sponsored posts by PartnerUp" in there.

    Also, it's worth noting that in the Wall Street Journal case you're talking about the paper's owner. In this case we're talking about a sponsor -- essentially, a glorified advertiser. I don't think the WSJ has ever done disclosures about companies that run ads in their paper, although I could be wrong.