NewsGator purchases Bradbury Software

NewsGator Technologies has purchased Bradbury Software in a cash and stock deal.

Bradbury Software is develops FeedDemon, a feed aggregator, and TopStyle, a website editor, for the Windows operating system. Nick Bradbury lives in Franklin, Tennessee and is the sole developer and runs his entire business from the top floor of his house. Nick develops in Delphi. I used FeedDemon from its first beta until I moved to Mac last May.

NewsGator develops free feed aggregators for Windows Media Center, and online as well as a paid aggregator for Microsoft Outlook. NewsGator is currently developing an enterprise server (“Dino”) for corporate deployment behind a firewall. NewsGator was founded by Greg Reinacker and received three rounds of financing. Brad Feld of Mobius invested in June 2004 and again in December 2004 and Richard Levandov Masthead Venture Partners invested in April 2005. NewsGator is located in Denver, Colorado. NewsGator Outlook Edition and enterprise edition are coded in C#.

NewsGator’s desktop play was restricted to Microsoft Outlook and all the hooks and nuances of developing for the Office platform. FeedDemon stands on its own in so many ways that NewsGator is able to hedge its bets with a standalone desktop application with more of a consumer focus.

I’ve known both Nick and Greg for years and they are two people passionate about delivering feeds to their readers. Greg will develop something for a new platform such as media center or smartphone just to show that it can be done. Nick will buy a new gadget, play around with it for a bit, and then figure out how FeedDemon can best be integrated with the gadget’s features. They are both tinkerers that spend time with their users to figure out the best new features for their applications.

Congratulations to Nick, Greg, and the rest of the NewsGator team. I hope Nick gets to stay in Tennessee and drink his Miller Light while Greg and his team are in Coors country.

Update: Nick makes it official and lets us know he will not be moving, just traveling more. Denver is about a two hour flight from Nashville.

Greg Reinacker and Brad Feld tell their side of the story on their individual weblogs. NewsGator posted a press release.