PLEASANT RIDGE ? ePrize Founder Josh Linkner and its biggest financial supporter, Dan Gilbert, are no longer part of the Internet promotions company, bought out by Catterton Partners, a Connecticut-based, consumer-focused private equity company with $2.5 billion under management.

ePrize CEO Matt Wise, in an interview with MITechNews.Com Editor Mike Brennan, said Catterton Partners took a seat on the ePrize board that had included Linkner and Gilbert. Both men now work together at Detroit Venture Partners, which provides not only financing for promising start-ups, but also a home in a downtown Detroit incubator.

?Josh and Dan are no longer a part of the company,? Wise said. He declined to disclose the terms or how much both received from the sale. But confirmed “neither of them got hurt.” Gilbert invested $32 million in ePrize in 2006. He owns Quicken Loans and is the majority owner of the Cleveland Cavilers NBA basketball team.

Wise said there were a lot of suitors for ePrize, which offers a technology platform that lets brands in 44 countries engage with consumers through mobile devices and social media. But he said Catterton, with extensive holdings in consumer products and consumers services, was a good fit.

Wise said the Catterton Partners money will be used to fund future growth and perhaps some acquisitions.In July 2011, ePrize acquired a division of Apollo Data Technologies, and in January 2012, acquired Cellit, a mobile solutions company.

He also said the company is bursting at the seams at its Pleasant Ridge headquarters and might be shopping for a bigger space in downtown Detroit. A number of its employees already live there, he said. The company has 300 employees in Southeast Michigan, with another 200 scattered in offices in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Seattle.

ePrize is looking to hire software engineers and account management professionals.

?There is a shortage now,? he said. ?Tell all the software engineers in the Southeast Michigan area to stop on by.?

Wise said ePrize may have started out as an Internet promotions and contest company, but over the past few years, it has shifted its strategy to embrace mobile marketing. Customer campaigns now focus on social media, hand-held devices and point-of-sale. The grand strategy is to develop a seamless campaign that woos a consumer with a pitch over the Internet, prompts him or her to bring his hand-held device to a store to eyeball the item, then close the deal by making a purchase using the hand-held device at the cash register.

?The Smart Phone is the new wallet,? Wise said. ?Mobile commerce has really shifted the way consumers consume content and buy merchandise.?

Tablet computers, he said, are just Smart Phones in a larger format. He also predicted within the next five years, a shift will occur from credit cards to hand-held devices, much the same way the public shifted earlier from cash to credit cards. But the security issue is the 900-pound gorilla in the room, he conceded. Mobile computing needs better security standards to put the public?s mind at ease about buying goods and services wirelessly.

?It?s very new technology,? he said. ?We?re still working on the standards. But in 10 years, no one will carry a wallet or credit cards.?

Wise said the ePrize sale is great for the company and Detroit.

?It shows you can start a great technology company in Detroit,? he said, ?you can build it, and you can have a successful exit. What we hope now is to pollinate the local community with ePrize veterans who spin off and create other tech companies.?

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