Appia ranked #15 on WSJ’s Top 50 Venture-Backed Companies
Appia comes out ahead of over 10,000 startups to be named The Next Big Thing by the Wall Street Journal
Durham, N.C. – March 11, 2011 – Appia, the world's largest open app marketplace and white label storefront platform,has been named to The Wall Street Journal’s The Next Big Thing list which seeks to identify and rank venture-backed companies across all industries that have the capital, executive experience and investor know-how to succeed. Appia was selected from a pool of more than 5,000 companies and ranked 15 out of 50 companies under evaluation. Consideration for Wall Street Journal’s Next Big Thing list was based on proprietary data from Dow Jones VentureSource and input from Dow Jones VentureWire’s reporters and editors.
“Venture capitalists are always looking for companies with a new idea that will prove powerful enough to explode into the marketplace,” said Alan Murray, deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal. “The Next Big Thing highlights companies that we believe are worth watching and have a chance to make waves in their industry.”
“This is an exceptional honor to be chosen as one of the top companies from a field of more than 5,000 potential candidates,” said Jud Bowman, CEO of Appia. “The Wall Street Journal is one of the most credible sources of financial and business information in the world, and our ranking is a testament to our hard work and validation of our renewed focus and white-label marketplace strategy.”
The Next Big Thing is an annual ranking published by The Wall Street Journal. To be eligible for the ranking, a company must be based in the U.S., have raised an equity round of financing in the three years ended Nov. 30, 2010 and have a valuation of $1 billion or less. The ranking was calculated by applying a set of four financial criteria: the track records of success for both a company's founders and management; track records for the investors on its board; the amount of capital raised in the last three years; and the percentage change in a company's valuation in the last year. Dow Jones VentureWire reporters and editors also provided their perspective and expertise beyond the numbers.
Appia (formerly PocketGear) was founded in June 2008, when the company spun out from Motricity (NASDAQ: MOTR) as a stand-alone business. The company is led by CEO Jud Bowman, co-founder of Motricity. In August 2010, Appia announced $15 million in funding led by Trident Capital, BlackBerry Partners Fund, and Eric Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures.
To view The Next Big Thing ranking, visit the Wall Street Journal.
About Dow Jones
Dow Jones & Company is a global provider of news and business information and a developer of technology to deliver content to consumers and organizations across multiple platforms. Dow Jones produces newspapers, newswires, Web sites, apps, newsletters, magazines, proprietary databases, conferences, radio and video. Its premier brands include The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones Newswires, Factiva, Barron’s, MarketWatch, SmartMoney and All Things D. Its information services combine technology with news and data to support business decision making. The company pioneered the first successful paid online news site and its industry leading innovation enables it to serve customers wherever they may be, via the Web, mobile devices and tablets. The Dow Jones Local Media Group publishes community newspapers, Web sites and other products in six U.S. states.Dow Jones & Company (www.dowjones.com) is a News Corporation company (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV; www.newscorp.com).
About Appia
Appia is the world's largest open app marketplace and white label storefront platform, supporting all operating systems and handsets. Today, Appia powers app storefronts for more than 40 partners reaching more than 200 million mobile subscribers in 200 countries and counting. Customers include four of the world’s top five handset manufacturers, three of the top four mobile operators in the US, and three of the top ten mobile operators globally, including Samsung, Opera, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon Wireless. The Appia Developer Program provides partners with a ready to launch catalog of over 140,000 paid and free apps from more than 30,000 global application developers. Appia is headquartered in Durham, NC with offices in Dallas, TX, and Munich, Germany. For more information, visit http://www.appia.com, or follow @Appia.
Contact:
Eric Gonzalez
VSC PR for Appia
415-272-0836
eric@vscconsulting.com
