When Synchronoss went public in 2006, one customer, Cingular Wireless, made up about 75 percent of its revenue. The New Jersey company ran the back-office software that turned an online order for a phone or a service plan into a working account. Its ActivationNow platform handled the steps between clicking buy and getting a signal. Phone carriers and cable companies were pushing more sales online, and every sale needed that plumbing.

Orders In, Phones On

Stephen Waldis founded Synchronoss in 2000 in Bridgewater, New Jersey. The company took orders from a carrier's website or store, checked them, and pushed them through billing, shipping and network systems until a customer's service was live. Its customers included Cingular Wireless, Vonage and Cablevision. Synchronoss charged per transaction, so it earned more as its customers sold more. Its reliance on Cingular was both its biggest strength and its biggest risk.

Eight Dollars, Then Lumine

Synchronoss priced its IPO at $8 a share in June 2006 and listed on Nasdaq as SNCR. It later moved into cloud storage and messaging for carriers. In 2023 Lumine Group, a software buyer, purchased its messaging and NetworkX units. Lumine then agreed in December 2025 to buy the rest of the company for $9 a share in cash, about $116 million in equity value. The deal closed on February 13, 2026, and Synchronoss left Nasdaq.

Cover: The Clock Tower, Paris, Charles Meryon. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a clock tower (keeping systems in sync).