Apple Acquires Chinedu Echeruo’s HopStop.com
Reports have it that Apple recently acquired Chinedu Echeruo’s HopStop.com,- an online city transit guide offering door-to-door subway and bus directions and maps for over 140 cities around the world using its website, or apps for iPhone, iPad and Android. The company, which was founded in 2005, was named one of the top 100 fastest growing software companies in the United States in 2011
Some analysts have said that HopStop.com can be compared to Israel’s Waze which was recently acquired by Google for $1 billion. The move is seen as Apple’s plan to bolster its map offering especially given Google’s recent acquisition of Waze.
The founder of HopStop,a serial entrepreneur, Chinedu Echeruo grew up in Eastern Nigeria and attended Kings College, Lagos. He attended Syracuse University and the Harvard Business School in the United States and founded HopStop.com after working for several years in the Mergers & Acquisitions and Leveraged Finance groups of J.P Morgan Chase where he was involved in a broad range of M&A, Financing and Private Equity transactions. He also worked at AM Investment Partners, a $500 million volatility-driven convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund.
He founded and raised nearly $8 million for his two U.S based internet companies; Hopstop.com and Tripology.com. Tripology.com was acquired in 2010 by American travel and navigation information company, Rand McNally. He was named Black Enterprise Magazine’s Small Business Innovator of the year and listed in the magazine’s Top 40 under 40 and is currently a partner and head of the Principal Investing group at Constant Capital, a West Africa based investment bank.
This is really inspiring!