| Type | Public (NASDAQ: MOTR) |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2001 |
| Founder(s) | Ryan Weurch |
| Headquarters | Bellevue, Washington, USA |
| Key people | Ryan Weurch (Chairman and CEO) |
| Services | Mobile Portal Services |
| Website | www.motricity.com |
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 in October 2004 after its merger with Pinpoint Networks. The name Motricity is a portmanteau of the words mobile and electricity.
The company currently has over 300 employees and is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, with offices in Morrisville, North Carolina and London.
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In 2001, Wuerch founded PowerByHand, a company that provides content, information and education for hand-held and mobile devices. PowerByHand acquired a number of commercial Internet companies, 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, the company changed its name to Motricity and announced the acquisition of Mobile2Day.de, a European mobile content portal.
Motricity later sold off these acquired units, with the smartphone applications business going to the newly created Pocketgear, Inc. in June, 2008,[1] to focus the company on mobile content delivery services.
These rounds raised the company's total funding to over US$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 US$50 million in March 2007 and another US$50 million in October of that same year. This last was part of a US$185 million round of funding. Advanced Equities Inc. raised its investment by another US$100 million, adding to its US$50 million already invested.
The total raised by this point in time was reported to be US$405 million.
The 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 US$135 million.[2] The initial strategy of the company was to leverage the Fuel storefront solution with the newly acquired mCore mobile portal solution to present a total solution for mobile providers.
Shortly after the InfoSpace acquisition was completed, Motricity found that the mCore storefront acquired from InfoSpace was more technically appealing, and decided to move forward with that solution. This was followed shortly by the announcement that 250 employees based in Durham would be laid-off, and the corporate headquarters moved to Bellevue, WA, leaving approximately 100 employees remaining in Durham.[3]
On January 22, 2010 the company filed for a $250 million IPO.[4] The company went public on June 18, 2010, offering 6,000,000 shares at US$10 per share.[5]