Before phones carried your calendar, you kept it on a PC and a handheld and hoped they matched. Puma Technology sold the software that made them match. Its IntelliSync products synced contacts and schedules, and its TranXit software moved files over infrared beams. Puma's code shipped on machines from Compaq, IBM, Toshiba and a dozen other makers. The company went public in December 1996, as the PalmPilot was turning handhelds into a mass market.

The Invisible Middleman

Princeton classmates Bradley Rowe and Stephen Nicol started Puma in August 1993. Their bet was that people would carry more and more devices, and every one would need to agree with the PC on the desk. Puma sold mostly through hardware makers, who bundled its software with their laptops and handhelds. Its customer list read like a guide to the computer industry, from Hitachi and Motorola to Sharp and Samsung.

Nokia Picks It Up

Puma priced at $9.50 a share in December 1996 and listed on Nasdaq as PUMA. Over the next decade it shortened its name to Pumatech and bought rivals in the sync business. In 2004 it renamed itself Intellisync, after its best-known product, and moved into syncing email to phones. Nokia bought Intellisync in February 2006 for about $430 million, or $5.25 a share.

Cover: Jaguar Standing, Antoine Louis Barye. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a big cat (the puma).