Yesterday, PowWow Mobile announced our forthcoming acquisition of StarMobile, a rapid mobile development platform (RMAD) provider headquartered in Atlanta. StarMobile emerged out of Georgia Institute of Technology’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) and immediately was viewed as one of the highest-potential company’s in our industry. With almost $6 million in seed money and another $2 million in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), StarMobile built an application transformation and analytics platform that analysts and enterprises raved about. You can read our full announcement here.
I have known StarMobile’s founder and CEO, Todd Fryburger, for well over a decade; and when I began as CEO of PowWow Mobile in April, one of the first things I did was to reconnect with him. While the media and analysts have always positioned our two companies as competitors, the truth is that our technologies are way more complementary than competitive. But with so much confusion and clutter in the enterprise mobility / RMAD space, that message was never really understood.
It didn’t take many conversations for Todd and I to both agree that the acquisition of StarMobile by PowWow would create a competitive advantage worth pursuing. By combining forces, we could expedite the timeline for how we could help customers address the explosive demand for a mobile-enabled workforce.
While other RMAD players focus on point solutions and micro apps, Todd and I share the same vision for truly ubiquitous enterprise mobility that is seamless to achieve. With such similar mindsets, we entered into due-diligence and both our Board of Directors have since agreed on the purchase. We expect to officially close in 30 days.
The Synergies Betwe
en PowWow Mobile & StarMobile
The acquisition creates the most comprehensive enterprise mobility platform, based on the richest IP and patent portfolio, in the industry. Our respective technologies combined will allow all customers to leverage a unified platform to address a broader set of use cases in the future.
What will the combined technologies, look like? Think about this.
PowWow Mobile has for some time, an industry-leading visual editor, SmartUX Studio, which puts the power of the SmartUX Platform into the hands of developers. We also allow companies to build net new “mobile first” apps that have no back-end dependencies but, can connect to anything including APIs or web services. In addition, our platform is based on a stack of open source elements including Angular JS, Cordova and Ionic, hence most companies have IT resources that are well versed in these technologies as opposed to having to learn yet another proprietary platform.
As a compliment, StarMobile excels with a comprehensive Dashboard analytics suite, which gives customers real-time and historical insights into how their apps are performing and how they are being used. It also presents diversity in the types of back-end applications that can be modernized and mobilized, including legacy “green screen” mainframe applications.
When all of the features and functionalities of PowWow and StarMobile are combined, no other company in the industry will have such a comprehensive platform to enable customers to mobilize and modernize any applications (or to build net new apps), for use on any endpoint, delivered as a native app, with speed, simplicity and economy.
During this transition period, my good friend, and now colleague, Todd Fryburger will serve as a board advisor until the integration is complete, before filling a permanent role with the company. StarMobile’s former VP of marketing and communication, Kristen Rachels, has already moved to PowWow to serve in a similar role. PowWow will continue to have, and grow, our presence in Atlanta, as it is such a vital location and home to many of our customers and prospects.
It’s an exciting time for PowWow Mobile and the industry. We look forward to continuing to help you on your digital transformation journey.
