Google beefs up their social efforts with acquisition of social marketing startup Wildfire Interactive today.
By Angie Chang (Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Women 2.0)

Google declared on its blog today that they will be “sparking better conversation with Wildfire”, announcing the acquisition of social marketing startup Wildfire Interactive today. Wildfire was co-founded by Victoria Ransom and Alain Chuard (both pictured).

In an interview, Victoria talked about growing up on a farm in New Zealand “in the middle of nowhere”. She caught the entrepreneurship bug and in the midst of her second or third company, she realized that even as a business person without technical skills, she wanted to create an online platform to scale the social media marketing efforts for everyone. Wildfire Interactive was born.

The company raised $14M in venture funding to accelerate the company which has now employees around 300 in Redwood City, California. Victoria was interviwed for a Women 2.0 piece on how to be a tech entrepreneur without knowing how to program and featured in a female founders to watch in the Facebook ecosystem list.

In a recent interview, Victoria said “We have a very diverse team in terms of gender and 40% of our team is female. I think the fact that our company is led by a woman helps us to attract top-notch women and I consider this to be one of our great strengths.”

Congratulations to Victoria Ransom and the entire team at Wildfire – and to Google for the successful acquisition!

Photo credit: Derek Draper
Angie Chang co-founded Women 2.0 in 2006. She currently serves as Editor-In-Chief of Women 2.0 and is working to mainstream women in high-growth, high-tech entrepreneurship. Previously, Angie held roles in product management and web UI design. In 2008, Angie launched Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners, asking that guys come as the “+1” for once. Angie holds a B.A. in English and Social Welfare from UC Berkeley. Follow her on Twitter at @thisgirlangie.