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March 6, 2008

Kleiner Perkins Announces $100 million iFund for iPhone Applications

Erick Schonfeld

43 comments »

apple-ifund.pngJohn Doerr took the stage today at Apple’s announcement of its iPhone software developer kit and announced a $100 million fund to invest in startups that create apps for the iPhone. “”I can’t wait to see the great new companies that we build together,” he says. The fund will be led by Matt Murphy at Kleiner and will be called the iFund. From the the Kleiner Perkins Website:

KPCB’s iFund is a $100M investment initiative that will fund market-changing ideas and products that extend the revolutionary new iPhone and iPod touch platform. The iFund is agnostic to size and stage of investment and will invest in companies building applications, services and components. Focus areas include location based services, social networking, mCommerce (including advertising and payments), communication, and entertainment. The iFund will back innovators pursuing transformative, high-impact ideas with an eye towards building independent durable companies atop the iPhone / iPod touch platform.

This is in line with similar, if smaller, funds announced to invest in Facebook apps, the $10 million fbFund and a Facebook-only fund from Bay Partners.

Steve Jobs truly wants to turn the iPhone into an industry, and he got Kleiner to jump start it with $100 million. That should get the ball rolling on iPhone-only startups. Some ideas we’d like to see get funded: an iPhone-only social network and a company that can make Flash work on the iPhone (that would be huge). Pictured to the left is Electronic Art’s Spore on the iPhone, which will be released in September.

The iPhone does have many unique features (you could base a whole startup on just creating accelerometer apps), but those features also become quickly copied. Everywhere you turn there is another touchscreen phone these days. Does it make sense to start a company that produces apps only for the iPhone and no other mobile device? Maybe what we will see are startups that develop for the iPhone first and then port to other mobile phones.

But you don’t need a new $100 million fund for that either. We are seeing that already as the iPhone is becoming the de facto mobile platform for mobile Web apps. Actual third party applications won’t be available until June, but developers can start building today.

CrunchBase Information
iFund
John Doerr
Matt Murphy
Information provided by CrunchBase
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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 11:20 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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    May 10th, 2008 at 9:24 pm

  5. The iFund Has Competition: $150 Million Blackberry Fund To Be Announced Soon

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Comments

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  1. LA Guy

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    This is just EXCITING !! :)

  2. Tiffani

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:23 am

    Indeeeed!

  3. Peter Harrington

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:25 am

    This reminds me of the fund hat was created to make facebook apps.

  4. LA Guy

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    http://developer.apple.com/iphone/devcenter/

    Just went down !! :D LOL !!

  5. ryan

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:37 am

    can we see any of the apps. like spore?

  6. Jagannath

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:39 am

    LA Guy they are updating ;)

  7. Peter Harrington

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:43 am

    I hope these apps have a better end then the facebook apps, I really know want tons of messages telling me to get an iphone app

  8. Pay Per Click Journal

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    We agree with Peter above us - hopefully these apps have a better outcome than the Facebook ones. At least these developers have an example of what NOT to do. No spamming!

  9. Andrew

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    very cool.

  10. xoost.com

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    that’s serious money

  11. h

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Hey Erick, the SDK is already available today for free. What comes out in June is the App Store.

  12. A Taylor

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    Hopefully a few of the companies that are funded will develop IPhone apps for the enterprise as opposed to the Web 2.0 type apps that are the norm on Facebook

  13. Kenneth Berger

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    Adobe has a similar program for companies building on its platform:

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=174

  14. bob

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    I just hope flash stays off the phone. Native and openweb are enough to build applications with. Plus pages load quicker and are more navigatable. Flash not being on the iPhone is one of its draw.

  15. Adam

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    $100 million seems like a lot to invest in iphone apps considering the current size of the iphone market. However, if the iphone meets Apple’s projections for sales, I could see this being potentially huge.

  16. drew olanoff

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    I don’t know….I’m not impressed by the whole thing. I want to see how open this will be, and how this will work with the iTunes store. Will apps be available for free? Or will a ridiculous marketplace with crazy prices emerge simply because….well they can?

    We pay enough for the hardware and the service. Seriously, at what point is enough enough.

  17. Baher

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    The highly anticipated release of the SDK alongside this great stunt orchestered by Steve Jobs will ignite a craze of iPhone Apps, in what I expect to see a giant wave that is times bigger than the previous Facebook apps wave.

    We will definitely see startups being formed solely for the purpose of developing apps for the iPhone, and have a shot at fame and fortune.

  18. christopher carfi

    March 6th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Erick…shameless plug…we just announced an iPhone-focused network and Unofficial Pocket Guide for SXSW: http://sxsw.cerado.com/

  19. antje wilsch

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    better get to work on my iphone-facebook application widget :)

  20. Davide Di Cillo

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    how sad is having a lot of idea like i do but not having the tools and the knowledge to build them…

  21. John Atkinson

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    This is fantastic news - we’re already working on ideas to incorporate the SDK functionality into our mobile apps… Now, if we could just get into the ADC site (lol)

    @Davide Di Cillo - not sad at all… you can easily find others who have the tools and knowledge to build them - start networking my friend.

  22. Joel Smith

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:45 pm

    “defacto mobile web access”?? hahaha are you crazy or just Apple drunk? Jobs announced there will be on flash on iPhone and now most Nokias will support flash and silverlight. I think thats why they have the market share they do. That and they are not closed down to at&t networks

  23. Alaska Miller

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:46 pm

    This isn’t the first time KPCB’s pulled off a publicity stunt like this. They wrangled together 100 million for the Java Fund back in the mid 90’s. That sputtered for a bit then disappeared.

  24. Ash

    March 6th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Since when is accelerometer in a phone a unique feature?? Sony Ericsson has public JSRs that enables any java application to use the accelerometer in their phones. There is already games out there that uses this feature. One example is EA Sports Need For Speed which you can run on Sony Ericsson phones..

  25. Paul

    March 6th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Nice to see KP making the transition from VC fund to hip non-profit.

    A social network restricted to a niche platform - cool. As discussed on these pages it has become just too easy for social networks to make money.

  26. Michael Arrington

    March 6th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    “Nice to see KP making the transition from VC fund to hip non-profit.”

    heh.

  27. eric

    March 6th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

    dude….i think Matt Murphy is my neighbor … cool .. congrats to him …

  28. Dean Terry

    March 6th, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    Hopefully we’ll see people taking advantage of location information, using the camera in interesting ways (games for example), and other apps that are better for being mobile and connected.

    There’s so much creative energy that has been pent up waiting to be released. What the carriers and others have just not understood is that the more control the big players give up, the more $ they will make. Let’s go to it folks.

  29. Davide Di Cillo

    March 6th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    @John Atkinson
    Trust me, I network, but everybody I know with the talent to realize my ideas are all of course superbusy… maybe i should just publish them on my blog and if somebody want to pick them up can put me in the credits ;)

  30. 113.com

    March 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm

    Nice.

  31. JosefVirek

    March 6th, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    what will be the revenue model for these startups? and pls. no ads on my lovely, sexy gorgeous iphone.

  32. jbelkin

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    All interesting and good - can’t understand why anyone wants Flash ads on the iPhone - what’s the point? It’s the animated gifs of 2008 - pretty pointless and just a toy now.

  33. sunnysmile

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:18 pm

    He did his time. He is so young and talent. My friends on mixedfriends dotcom love him very much. It is a niche interracial dating service

  34. David

    March 6th, 2008 at 11:39 pm

    Only developers who have traditional training, who can do pointer arithmetic, memory allocations, etc will be able to write great apps for the iPhone. All those web 2.0 types who can only do PHP, Ruby on Rails, etc will not be able to participate and that is a good thing. Thank god!

  35. Marc

    March 7th, 2008 at 11:00 am

    Well, Apple is going to dig its own grave.
    At least this version and license is imho not going to be of success. I was realy awaiting the SDK but when I read that apple whats 30% margin…FORGET IT. Then I am going to develop apps for the gPhone!

    By the way..the gPhone, I should say Android since it is just an OS, will be available on millions of phone in the future (the iPhone, as a expensive gadget for people with to much money, probably wont). And do you want to know why: because Android is for free and because of this it will be build into mobiles/pdas in emerging markets (I think I don’t have to name India or China). Wiriting a cheap app for these markets, but sell it millions of times….

  36. sponti

    March 7th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    @Marc
    Instead of iPhone’s 70% margin you get in “emerging markets” probably about 0%, as it will be pirated (if your apps are worth it, of course).

    I remember when a reader in the newspaper “Bangkok Post” desperately asked where he could purchase a legal version of MS Word, as all the shops just had pirated software. :-)

    Concerning “Apple is going to dig its own grave”, please visit:
    http://www.macobserver.com/appledeathknell/

  37. Allan

    March 9th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    Love the proliferation of these platform specific funds. It’s an exciting time to be a developer and entrepreneur.

  38. Robbie

    March 19th, 2008 at 7:51 am

    i cant understand why apple does not invest the money themselves seeing as they have $18 billion in cash.

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