By Alan Wolf

News & Observer

 

Durham — Jud Bowman and Taylor Brockman, who started a software project in their Durham high school dorm that eventually became a billion-dollar business, want to help other students do the same.

 

Bowman and Brockman will announce today that they have given $100,000 for an endowment at the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics. The money will help pay for student research projects and entrepreneurial ventures.

 

"We've been extraordinarily lucky, and it all started because of the school," said Bowman, NCSSM class of 1999. "We've talked for a long time about how we could give back."

 

The elite, state-sponsored high school enrolls juniors and seniors from across the state. Students aren't allowed outside jobs while enrolled, and some families don't have the finances to pay for extra research projects, Bowman said.

 

The current state budget reduced the school's funding about 7 percent, and officials are relying more heavily on alumni support, said Chancellor Todd Roberts. The endowment from Bowman and Brockman is one of the school's larger donations since it opened in 1980, he added.

 

"This expands our ability to promote innovation and entrepreneurship," Roberts said. "They're trying to help seed new opportunity for students. We're really happy that they feel like the school played a role in their success."

 

The endowment will provide small grants, probably worth about $500 each, twice a year to five to 10 students with promising ideas. The initial applications are due Sept. 15 and the first grants will be awarded in late October.

 

"The school is an incubator for great new ideas," Brockman said. "We're trying to formalize a way for these students to get access to extra funding. It could lead to the next big biotechnology company or the next Motricity."

 

That's the technology company that grew out of a software project Bowman and Brockman started in the school's Hunt Dormitory in the late 1990s when they were both 17.

 

The two men, now veteran entrepreneurs at 30 years old, both left Motricity in the summer of 2008. They still owned stakes in the company when it held an initial public offering of stock in June 2010.

 

While the shares have slumped in recent months, they peaked at more than $30 each last fall, giving Motricity a market value of more than $1 billion.

 

What Bowman does now

Bowman now runs another company, Durham-based Appia, which helps wireless carriers and smartphone providers around the world build online "apps" stores. Appia has attracted attention and funding from big-name investors, including the CEO of Google.

 

Appia recently signed a deal with Vodacom Group, the largest wireless carrier in southern Africa.

 

"We'll be one of the biggest apps stores in Africa," Bowman said. "That's when it's less about downloading Facebook and Zynga games, and it's more change-the-world type of stuff."

 

Brockman spends some of his time in Charleston, S.C., racing sailboats, but he also is doing some software work with green energy businesses such as Consert.

 

The Raleigh-based smart-grid company makes technology that lets homeowners and business owners remotely control thermostats, water heaters and other appliances.

 

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