GrayboxxBayAdvisor, for an undisclosed but small amount. The sale amount was undisclosed but "a single," if one were to describe it using baseball terminology, founder Bob Chandra tells me. Saratoga, Calif.-based Grayboxx's innovation was mining address books and aggregating lots of information about local businesses, such as how many credit card purchases were made at them, then calculating a popularity ranking for each business. A user sees Grayboxx search results displayed according to this calculation. The results seemed pretty good, from my use of the service. Check out this search I just did for "mexican food" in Mountain View, California, below.
However, local search is a very competitive area. On the one end, Google, Yahoo and other large companies offer decent local search features, most prominently on their mobile applications such as on the Google Maps application. A range of content sites also offer ways for you to drill down to find things in your area. There's local review site Yelp, local online classifieds site Craigslist, as well as Facebook's own regional networks, that include events and other local information. These are all just some of the more obvious competitors -- there are many other startups in this area, too. Bay Advisor is a sort of search service where Bay Area businesses can find relevant information. It will use Grayboxx's IP to build out vertical searches.
There was some upside for investors, including Sierra Ventures, as well as its management team, depending in part on how things go for Bay Advisor, Chandra says.