Appia

Jud Bowman is the founder and CEO of Appia and has helped grow the company into the largest cross platform, open app marketplace in the world. In March 2011, the Wall Street Journal ranked Appia #15 on its list of the Top 50 VC-backed companies out of more than 5,700.

Prior to Appia, Jud co-founded Motricity (Nasdaq: MOTR) in September 1999 and was instrumental in growing the company to more than $100 million in annual revenues and 500 employees globally. As Motricity’s Chief Technology Officer, Jud was the chief architect of one of the industry's leading mobile content delivery platforms – a platform that has delivered more than $3 billion of content to mobile phones and was named the 2006 Best Service Delivery Platform by the GSM Association, Best Content Service Delivery Platform by Mobile Entertainment magazine, and honored by Frost & Sullivan as the Premium Mobile Content Platform of the Year in 2005. In June 2010, Motricity successfully completed a $50 million IPO co-led by Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and has achieved a market capitalization as high as $1.25 billion.

Jud has been named one of the world's "Top 100 Young Innovators" by MIT's Technology Review and one of "Tech's Best Young Entrepreneurs" by BusinessWeek in 2007. He was also recognized as a winner of the Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" award in the Carolinas in 2001 and 2010. Jud is currently on leave from Stanford University, where he was named a President's Scholar, and is a graduate of the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.

Craig Forman

Executive Chairman

With more than 20 years of experience in the media, technology and telecommunications industries, Craig Forman joined the Appia team after most recently serving as executive chairman of WHERE, North America’s largest location-based media company, which was acquired by eBay in April 2011. Previously, he served as president of the $1 billion consumer access and audience business at EarthLink, the Atlanta-based Internet services provider.

Before joining EarthLink, Forman spearheaded Yahoo’s media and information units, leading Yahoo! News, Finance, Sports and other award-winning products to first-place in their respective categories. Forman also oversaw internet and media divisions at Time Warner’s CNN and TIME divisions, and The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones. Earlier, he held leadership positions at Success Television and MyPrimeTime Inc., which he co-founded, as well as search engine pioneer Infoseek where he was vice president of product management and a member of the management team through its successful IPO.

Forman began his career as a Pulitzer-nominated foreign correspondent at The Wall Street Journal, and has a master's degree in law from Yale and an undergraduate degree from Princeton.

Dov Cohn

Vice President, Products & Marketing

Dov Cohn joined the team at Appia in September, 2010 with (a bevy of) experience under his belt. Most recently, Dov served as the VP of Product Management and Marketing at Zoove where he launched the national Mobile Dial Code Registry and StarStar Mobile Dial Code Service.

Prior to Zoove, Dov was a founding member of the executive team at Motricity (2000-2007) where he served as VP of Product Strategy, VP of Business Development, and SVP of Marketing and Product Management.

Jim Harvey

Vice President, Content Business Development

Jim's entrepreneurial spirit combined with a passion for helping customers succeed, drives him to help developers market and monetize their apps. With over 15 years of business development and marketing experience in the mobile and technology industries, Jim is a valuable asset not only to Appia, but to developers. At Appia, he is responsible for expanding relationships with mobile content providers and driving strategy and sales efforts for its performance-based advertising solutions.

Prior to joining the Appia team, Jim served on the executive teams at Brooks Bell Interactive and Aegis Mobile where he helped build industry-leading digital marketing solutions and mobile advertising services. Jim also served as SVP of Consumer & Developer Services and VP of Content & Business Development at Motricity, a leading provider of mobile data solutions to carriers and media companies. Before Motricity, Jim played a significant part in the rollout, launch and success of the Web's first city guide network, Citysearch.

Ken Hayes

Senior Vice President,
Business Development

Ken has a passion for technology in general and mobile technology in particular. With over 16 years of experience working for entrepreneurial growth stage companies, Ken has led sales, marketing and account management teams for both mobile operators and for companies providing mobile services and applications.

Prior to Appia, Ken's roles included working at Acta Wireless as a Venture Partner, as EVP of Carrier Relations for Thumbplay, and as SVP of Sales at Motricity where he closed multi-million dollar deals with Tier 1 mobile operators around the world. Ken spent his formative years in marketing roles at Nextel, helping get the company launched and to customer scale for a successful IPO.

Jeff Henderson

Vice President, Engineering

Jeff Henderson joined Appia as Vice President of Engineering in January 2011, bringing over 20 years of engineering and management experience to the table. Most recently, Jeff served as Director of Engineering at Novarra, which was later acquired by Nokia, where he established and ran the company’s first remote engineering office.

Prior to Novarra, Jeff was a member of the executive team at Motricity where he led the engineering team that developed and deployed the company’s award-winning mobile content delivery platform, Fuel.

Tim Horan

Senior Vice President, Channel & Market Development

Tim brings over 15 years of management and development experience in the technology industry to the team here at Appia. He is our Sr. Vice President of Channel & Market Development, driving new and existing business development with our partners.

Prior to joining Appia, Tim managed global business development at Motricity where he closed contracts totaling over $2.5 billion in mobile content revenue. Previously, Tim also worked with Excite, one of the first search engines and online portals where he closed over $50 million in commerce and advertising contracts.

Most recently, Tim was Co-founder and President of Beecoz, a grant award funded local social search service that makes it simple and easy for people to find and share information about local businesses. Tim also has a patent pending for the dynamic creation of address-based social networks.

Slawek Pruchnik

Vice President, Technology

At Appia, Slawek heads our technology strategy and leads the development team for our smartphone application distribution network. He is a founding member of the management team and currently serves as Vice President of Technology.

Slawek co-founded PocketGear in 1999, serving as the Chief Technology Officer and architect of the mobile content delivery platform. After Motricity's acquisition of PocketGear, Slawek served as VP of Site Operations, managing partner deployment and the architecture of the platform.

Slawek received a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems degree with a specialization in software management from the University of Detroit Mercy. He is also a Microsoft Certified Professional and member of the Microsoft Software Developer Network.

Val Stiebris

Vice President,
Finance & Controller

Val brings over 18 years of financial leadership, including merger and acquisition experience, to the table at Appia. He is our Vice President of Finance and Controller, heading up the accounting and finance functions for the company.

Prior to Appia, Val worked with A4 Health Systems as Controller where he oversaw accounting and finance and led the integration of several acquisitions as revenue grew to over $75 million. After A4's acquisition by Allscripts, Val stayed on and served as VP of Finance as a key member of the integration team.

Before his work with A4 Health Systems, Val held a financial leadership position with a rapidly growing distribution software firm and began his career at KPMG. Val is a licensed Certified Public Accountant, and is a member of the North Carolina Association of CPAs.

Jud is President and CEO of Appia.

Craig Forman

Craig is Executive Chairman of Appia.

John Moragne

Senior Managing Director,
Trident Capital

John has has been with Trident since co-founding the firm in 1993. From 1989 to 1993, John was a Principal with Bain Capital, a leveraged buyout firm affiliated with Bain & Company. He was also a Principal of Information Partners Capital Fund, a private equity firm associated with Dun & Bradstreet Enterprises and Bain Capital. Earlier in his career, John was a management consultant with Bain & Company. John's current directorships include AirTight, ECO2 Plastics (ECOO.OB), E&C Medical Intelligence, HomeAway, Infopia, Perfect Escapes (Intagio), Sojern, Turn and Vixxi. He is a Board Observer to Sabre.

Mike Tyrrell

Partner, 
Venrock

Prior to Venrock, Mike spent nine years with Spyglass, a Venrock-backed portfolio company, joining as their sixth employee to run sales and marketing. Spyglass licensed the first internet browser, Mosaic, to many of the world’s leading software, online services, and device companies, including Microsoft. As the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development, Mike helped take the company public in 1995. Before Spyglass, he was with two other start-ups, Multiflow Computer and Celerity Computing, both UNIX systems pioneers. Mike began his career at Prime Computer.

Mike earned his B.S. in Business Administration at the University of New Hampshire. 

Mike Elliot

General Partner,
Noro-Moseley Partners

Mike has more than 20 years of investment experience, most recently as a general partner with the Wakefield Group in Charlotte, North Carolina. Prior to that time, Mike served as Managing Director for NationsBank Capital (now Bank of America Capital Investors), where he led a number of private equity financings in companies in the cable, healthcare and financial services market segments. He was also a founding general partner of NCNB Venture Company.

Prior to joining NMP in 2005, Mike worked extensively with the firm as a co-investor in numerous portfolio companies, including OpenSite (acquired by Siebel in 2000) and Cypress Communications (acquired by Arcapita in 2005).

Mike received a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and an MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar and Maurice Lee Fellow.

Steve Nelson

Managing Director,
Wakefield Group

Steve joined Wakefield Group with 19 years of executive and general management experience in technology, software and Internet-based businesses. He came on in October 1999 as managing director & partner and established the venture capital firm's Research Triangle Park, N.C., office. During the last three years of his career before delving into venture capital, Steve was at Quokka Sports, a digital media company, in several executive roles.

Steve served as chief executive of a joint venture company between NBC Sports and Quokka Sports, NBC/Quokka Ventures, LLC. Prior to Quokka, he served as a vice president with Informix Software, based in Menlo Park, C.A. His first business experience was 14-plus years at IBM, ultimately as vice president and general manager in San Francisco.

Steve is a member of the board of directors and chairman of the executive committee at Motricity and is also on the board of directors for APEX Analytix and Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. He was a past chairman of North Carolina's Council for Entrepreneurial Development, is co-founder of North Carolina's Innovation Association and is a member of the Investment Advisory Committee for the State Treasurer's office of North Carolina and its $70 billion investment portfolio.

Kevin Talbot

Co-Managing Partner,
Blackberry Partners Fund

Kevin is Co-Managing Partner of the BlackBerry Partners Fund™ in addition to being Managing Director of RBC Venture Partners where he oversees North American venture capital investments in early-stage enterprise software and services companies. Kevin has a long and successful track record as an entrepreneur and operator in the information technology industry in both Canada and the USA where he developed extensive start-up, growth and turn-around experience. Kevin began his career as an associate with a leading chartered accounting and management consulting firm. Kevin represents the Fund on the board of Xobni and also sits on the boards of Brickstream, Lumeta, and Igloo on behalf of RBC Venture Partners.

Bruce Boehm

Independent Venture Capitalist

Bruce is an independent venture capitalist, an advisor to several specialty venture capital funds, and on the adjunct faculty of the Kenan Flagler School of Business at UNC, Chapel Hill. From 1992 to 1996 he created and directed the Masters of Engineering Management Program at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. Prior to 1992 he was a General Partner of U. S. Venture Partners in Menlo Park, California, with responsibility for a portfolio of approximately 20 health-care and technology investments. Prior to 1982 he was employed by several Silicon Valley and Route 128 companies as an engineer and project manager. Bruce received a BS from MIT, and an MS and MBA from Stanford University. During his career he has been a director of more than 30 publicly and privately held companies.