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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

03/11/2011

Durham, NC -- 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.