ACBJ strikes agreement with deals site

American City Business Journals, the parent company of 40 weekly business newspapers across the country, has struck a deal with Boston-based RapidBuyr, a daily deals site that caters to small to mid-sized businesses.

RapidBuyr is currently in beta, but it expects to launch its first national deal this Thursday. The new partnership will allow RapidBuyr’s deals to reach the more than 10 million readers of ACBJ papers.

“This partnership opens the floodgates of opportunity to increase your visibility and customer base—at no cost,” states RapidBuyr on its site. “You can’t purchase this level of exposure!”

Michelle Lang of the Boston Business Journal writes, “The partnership marks the second pairing of ACBJ with Tom and Darr Aley, the co-founders of RapidBuyr. In 2004, the brothers teamed together to found Generate Inc., a web-based data and information service firm. ACBJ was the sole outside investor and a partner of Generate until it was acquired by Dow Jones & Co. in 2008.

“Tom Aley, who currently serves as president and CEO of RapidBuyr, was a senior vice president at Dow Jones and, prior to that, held the president and CEO posts at Generate. He was a founding partner at Reed Elsevier Ventures, a former executive vice president of California VC firm Stonepath Group, and a co-founder of former Newton firm OneZero Media Inc., which sold for $15 million in 1998 to GT Interactive Software.”