Phunware – 3 Million dollars Deal To Built The Trump Re-Election App.

Phunware is an American Mobile Software and Blockchain firm. It showcases a game-like mechanism so that it can engage the right audience for Brands. Basically, it manufactures mobile applications for business goals such as advertising and marketing and cryptocurrency brand loyalty programs. It was established in Austin, Texas. In 2020, it became the fifth-largest technology firm in politics due to its involvement with Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. It was criticized immensely for it. It operates 940 million unique active devices monthly and holds 5 billion daily transactions. The firm has made more than 120 million dollars since its founding.

History

Phunware was founded on 25th March 2009 by Alan Knitowski and Luan Dang in Austin, Texas. The key people involved in its foundation other than its founders were Randall Crowder (COO) and Matt Aune (CFO). Its headquarters are in Austin, Irvin, San Diego, and Miami. Its services include campaign data. It provided users’ daily digital trail to the Trump re-election campaign through a contract made with Brad Parscale’s American Made Media consultants. The deal was worth 3 million dollars and It also built the Trump re-election app in 2019. It had 93 employees in 2019 and got lowered to 44 in 2020, Phunware admitted Larry Sanger, Wikipedia co-founder to their advisory board that year.

Renowned Customers

Phunware provided its services for many renowned companies such as Warner Brothers, NASCAR, NFL, NBC Sports, American Made Media Consultants, Fox Networks Group, HID Global, Presidio Networked Solutions, and MD Anderson. They also made an app for Gun Talk Media and worked with Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Its location Tracking was used to target Democratic ads at participants in the anti-Trump 2017 Women’s March in 2018.

Acquisitions and Mergers

Phunware acquired Digby Mobile Commerce based in Austin, Texas in 2014 as a part of a 30 million dollars expansion. It also bought its subsidiary Movaya established in Seattle and Chengdu for an undisclosed sum. In December 2018, It performed a reverse merger with a special-purpose acquisition firm, Stellar Acquisitions III. In October 2021, It acquired Lyte technology, a computer system provider, for 10.98 million dollars to provide support to its blockchain research.

Revenue

The firm reached a Non-GAAP adjusted net revenue of 22.5 million dollars in 2018, got reduced to 19 million dollars in 2019 while its GAAP gross revenue in 2018 was 30.8 million dollars which was lowered to 19 million dollars in 2019. Fox Networks Group made their 50% sale in 2019 which was 42% in 2018. After the completion of the Fox project in 2019, their sales decreased. On April 17, 2020, the company got nearly delisted from NASDAQ due to the stock trading just below one dollar but got saved because the company’s shares increased just before the delisting.

Court Cases

Phunware filed a suit against Uber Technologies for failing to pay its taxes on three million dollars in unpaid services on September 26, 2017, in The Superior Court of California show. In response to this, Uber Technologies sued Phunware for fraud, accusing them of displaying ads of their ride-sharing app on unauthorized third-party websites. In October 2020, after a settlement, Phunware agreed to pay 6 to 4 million dollars to Uber for its fraudulent advertising.

Alan Knitowski – CEO

He works as the Chief Executing officer in the firm. He is a successful entrepreneur who has worked for over 15 years in the communication industry having multiple exits. He was also listed as a finalist for the 2014 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the year award for Central Texas. He served as an investor and also as a fund manager. He also served in United States Army as an Airborne, Air Assault, and Ranger qualified captain in the engineering unit.

Luan Dang – CTO

Luan serves as the Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder at Phunware. He is a great Entrepreneur, author, techie, Investor, and inventor. Before founding Phunware, he used to be the president of strategic Investments for Curo Capital LLC and of Alternative investment for Trymetris Capital Management. He was also the director of Engineering at Linksys. He also invested in Vonage and Telverse communications. In addition to these, he was a founding member of the Technical Advisory Board of OMPA and ISC. He has an experience of over 15 years in the communication industry.