Starfish Software was founded in 1994 by Philippe Kahn and

Sonia Lee Sonia Lee (born April 12, 1960) is a Korean-born entrepreneur best known as the co-founder and president of Fullpower Technologies. Sonia Lee also co-founded LightSurf and Starfish Software. Biography She is married to Philippe Kahn, CEO of Fu ...

, as a spin-off from the Simplify business unit from

Borland Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment product ...

and Kahn's severance from Borland. It was located in Santa Cruz, California. Starfish developed intellectual property for device synchronization, especially for wireless devices. TrueSync was the first over-the-air synchronization system. Starfish was acquired by Motorola for $325 million in 1998. The outspoken founding couple founded another company,

LightSurf LightSurf was a provider of multimedia messaging and interoperability solutions for the wireless industry. The company was founded in 1998 by tech entrepreneurs Philippe Kahn and Sonia Lee, and was acquired by VeriSign in 2008 and later by tel ...

, in the same year, to develop mobile phone photograph technology. In 2000, the company helped start the SyncML Initiative to standardize synchronization communication protocols. In March 2003, Starfish was acquired by Pumatech in San Jose, California, which was headed by turn-around CEO Woodson Hobbs. Pumatech later changed its name to Intellisync, and was acquired by Nokia in 2005.

References

Nokia assets Software companies based in California Companies based in Santa Cruz, California Software companies established in 1994 American companies established in 1994 Technology companies disestablished in 2008 1994 establishments in California 2008 disestablishments in California Software companies of the United States {{software-company-stub