Motricity

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Motricity' was formed in 2001 by Ryan Wuerch to provide integrated mobile content solutions for handheld and mobile devices. Originally formed as PowerByHand, the company changed its name to Motricity on October 2004 after its merger with Pinpoint Networks.

The company currently has more than 300 employees and is headquartered in Durham, North Carolina, with offices in Los Angeles, London, and Munich.

[edit] Corporate history

In 2001, Wuerch founded PowerByHand, a company that provides content, information and education for handheld and mobile devices. PowerByHand acquired a number of leading commercial internet sites, including PalmGear.com in October 2002, eReader.com in September 2003, and PocketGear.com, and Smartphone.net in March 2004.

In April 2004, PowerByHand merged with Pinpoint Networks, a provider of software and services for the management and delivery of mobile data services.

In October 2004, Motricity closed USD$27 million in venture funding, In that same month, the company changed its name to Motricity and announced the acquisition of Mobile2Day.de, a European mobile content portal.

Three more major private funding followed:

USD$30 million in July 2005, from Chicago–based Advanced Equities Inc., as well as such existing investors as Technology Crossover Ventures, New Enterprise Associates, and Intel Capital;
$40 million in April 2006, led by Advanced Equities Inc., with participation from other existing investors, including New Enterprise Associates and Technology Crossover Ventures;
USD$32 million in August 2006, led by Advanced Equities Inc., with participation from other existing investors.

These rounds raised the company's total funding to over USD$150 million, one of the largest amounts of capital ever raised by a private company in North Carolina.

Additional funding came from Carl Icahn in the form of USD$50 million in March 2007 and another USD$50 million in October of that same year. This last was part of a USD$185 million round of funding. Advanced Equities Inc. upped its investment in the company by another USD$100 million, adding to its USD$50 million already invested.

The total raised by this point in time was reported to be USD$405 million.

This October 2007 round of funding was used in large part to finance the January 2008 acquisition of the mobile division of Seattle based Infospace for a reported USD$135 million. Two months later (March 3rd, 2008), it was announced that the original Motricity employees (250) would be laid-off, and the former Infospace division would subsume the Motricity name. Ryan Wuerch and certain other "key" employees would keep their jobs and move to Seattle.