Ariel Diaz

Two Boston tech startups that have reimagined key parts of the college student experience are joining forces. Valore, focused on affordable textbooks and student loans, announced it has acquired Boundless, a developer of online/mobile textbooks and study materials.

The value of the deal wasn't disclosed, but I'm told that venture investors in Boundless have now received shares in Valore, a company that has been eyeing an IPO within the next few years. Valore says it's on track to surpass $100 million in revenue for 2015.

The promise of electronic text has been largely unrealized in academia, where students still pay thousands for books that lose most of their value within months. Here's why.

College students today stream movies from Netflix, queue up music on Spotify, and order late-night snacks on Seamless. But when it comes to buying textbooks, many students are still doing things the old-fashioned way: buying pricy paper copies from the campus bookstore at the start of the semester, then selling them back for a fraction of the purchase price when classes are done.