Annual growth: 99.4%
Category: E-commerce for communications providers
Employees: 150
CEO: Stephen Waldis
Competitors: NeuStar, VeriSign
Want to switch your phone company? Synchronoss provides the software that makes that happen—and more cheaply than service providers themselves.
Synchronoss’ order-management software is used by AT&T, Verizon, Cingular Wireless, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, Comcast Communications, Vonage and others. The system handles everything from transferring the phone number to fulfilling the delivery of equipment (e.g., a BlackBerry device).
CEO Stephen Waldis, 39, claims Synchronoss’ software can cut the cost of acquiring a subscriber from as much as $50—if a provider is using largely manual processes—to less than $10 each by automating many of the steps in the order-fulfillment process.
“Coming out of the telecom bubble [in the early 2000s], there was an incredible desire to get operational efficiencies in line,” Waldis says.
Synchronoss is in the black, posting a $12.4 million net profit for 2005, but there’s a caveat: It relies on one customer, Cingular, for the majority of its revenue. At one point, Cingular accounted for 80% of Synchronoss’ revenue; Waldis says that’s down to 68% for the second quarter of 2006. And, he notes, “the VoIP part of our business is growing much, much faster.”
