KPCB Doubles iPhone Fund, Steve Jobs Happy, But Boston Developers Prefer Android

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) just announced the doubling of its venture capital iFund to $200 million for companies developing applications for Apple's iPhone OS family of products, including iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

"Kleiner Perkins has done a terrific job at finding, funding and supporting great iPhone app developers," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We are thrilled that they are doubling the size of their fund, along with expanding it to now include iPad developers too."

Established in 2008 as a $100 million investment pool, fourteen iFund backed companies have been supported by an additional $330 million from follow-on investors.

KPCB also announced iFund-supported companies have more than 20 applications in development for the soon-to-be-released iPad, with 11 available at first ship on April 3. KPCB noted the iPhone has created an inflection in mobile content consumption and the iPad will lead the next wave of innovation in mobile computing. The iFund is increasing its investment dollars to back entrepreneurs and build companies that focus on these areas. Particular areas of interest on iPad include entertainment, communication, social networking, commerce, health care, and education.

"Welcome to the brave new post-PC era where a swoosh of fluidity replaces the traditional mouse-bound GUI. A new, truly revolutionary platform is rare, and a prize for entrepreneurs," said John Doerr, KPCB Partner. "We expect all ventures to have an iPad strategy. We will fund many more ventures for iPad, and the iFund will accelerate their success."

In Boston, developers prefer Android. As Erin Kutz wrote in Xconomy last month, “So the iPhone may be the prettiest, the Blackberry may boast the biggest smartphone market share, and the Windows Mobile platform is, um, around, but it’s Android that’s best for developing apps. Or at least it was the Android developers who best defended their platform at the smartphone smackdown during our Mobile Madness event.”

Of course, many new applications under development will likely be available on both platforms.

Mobile Monday Boston 2009 Investment Report

I’m rushing off to the event, but here is a preview of a new report that Kate Imbach, of Skyhook Wireless, plans to present today at Xconomy ‘s Mobile Madness.


Kate, one of the organizers of Mobile Monday Boston, first unveiled the investment data at Monday night’s meeting of the group.


This report evaluates the 100 Massachusetts mobile and wireless companies that saw  venture capital funding and acquisition activity  in 2009. The data reveals that mobile has now been a billion-dollar a year sector in Massachusetts for the last two years, despite recent drops in venture funding fueled by the current economic climate. Read the report here.

Mobile Madness, March 9, Should Attract Both Inventors and Investors

Full details describing Xconomy’s next big event, Mobile Madness: The New Future of Computing, are now available online, reports Chief Correspondent, Wade Roush.



Headlining the afternoon are keynote speakers from leading global, national, and regional organizations: Jhonatan Rotberg, executive director of the MIT-based Next Billion Network, will talk about the role mobile technology can play in solving social and economic challenges in the developing world; and Kate Imbach, Co-Founder & Organizer at Mobile Monday Boston & Silicon Valley and vice president of marketing at Skyhook Wireless, will walk us through the latest facts and figures on venture investment in the mobile technology sphere in New England (full agenda here).


Of special interest to Angel and VC investors will be a Mobile Showcase featuring 10 mobile startups. Presenters will give one-minute lightning presentations, and then the whole audience will adjourn to the lobby area at Microsoft, where representatives of the showcase companies will be available for one-on-one conversation around tables supplied with a variety of demos and handouts. Those presenters include Apperian, Appswell, bitHeads (from Ottawa, Ontario), Illume Software, the Public Radio Exchange, Roam Data, Rummble (from the United Kingdom), Sand9, SparkCloud, and WherePhone.

You can register here.

Vanishing Public Companies Shrinking Silicon Valley?

Very occasionally I find a blog post that provokes sufficient thought that I want to reproduce it in its entirety, hoping that a) the original author will be flattered rather than offended, and b) the readers of this blog aren’t reading exactly the same things I am.

  SiliconBeat, a blog from the San Jose Mercury News, postulates that the reduction in the number of public companies has led to a shrinking of Silicon Valley. I myself don’t have the data or resources to perform a similar study for the Boston area, but I would be delighted if someone at the Globe or Xconomy does.


The post by Chris O’Brien: Vanishing Public Companies Lead To The Incredible Shrinking Silicon Valley


“One of the most significant trends I’ve been watching over the past decade is the dramatic drop in public companies in Silicon Valley. Naturally, that number was artificially inflated during the dot-com bubble when it reached 417 in 2000. For our purposes, Silicon Valley includes San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, and the southern half of Alameda County.


“But the number of public companies has dropped for nine straight years now. Even when IPOs briefly reappeared in 2006 and 2007, they weren’t enough to overcome the net loss of public companies through acquisitions or bankruptcy.


“In 2008, the number had fallen to 261. We just updated our records and the latest figure is 241.


“That’s not just less than the dot-com era, that’s well below the 315 public companies the valley had in 1994 when the Mercury News started keeping track.


“Here’s why I think this is a big deal.


“First, it points to the massive consolidation at the top of the pile. The biggest companies continue to get bigger, in large part through acquisitions. This includes Hewlett-Packard, Oracle, Cisco Systems and now Google. We’re known for our start-ups, but increasingly the valley landscape is becoming dominated by these big enchiladas. That’s bound to have an impact on the rate of innovation.


“Next, the IPO remains a lost dream. Yes, it briefly reappeared last decade, but even in the good times last decade, they were nowhere near the pace of the early and mid 1990s. The IPO is dead, and it’s time to let go and rethink the way innovation gets funded and rewarded.


“Increasingly, venture capitalists have to look to acquisitions as the best hope for an exit. And these simply don’t produce the returns that an IPO homerun does. That means a big shakeout in the VC community is inevitable. Though it will unfold over many years, in a kind of slow motion implosion.


“Each year, we publish our SV150 section that looks at the top 150 public companies in the valley. At the pace we’re going, by the end of this decade, we won’t even have that many public companies.


“The valley has always managed to adapt to such fundamental changes. But I think the continued disappearance of public companies will pose one of the valley’s greatest challenges. If the valley remains on top in 10 years, it will be because the innovation economy looks far different than it does today.”

March is Mass Mobile Month: Celebrating New England Innovation

Its official, March is Mass Mobile Month in Massachusetts with a mind boggling array of events planned.  That’s Mass as in Massachusetts, but it’s also mass as in huge, because it’s going to be a gigantic month of mobile-related activity around town and around the world. The list of events is too long to include here—which is exactly why our friends at Xconomy have created the Mass Mobile Month website, a clearinghouse for information related to the all of the mobile conferences, camps, seminars, showcases, and networking events going on in New England.

Wonder what makes it official? Check today’s post by Wade Roush on Xconomy Boston for the official word.

I have signed up for two events already.

First is the Xconomy Forum: Mobile Madness, scheduled for Tuesday, March 9, 2010, 1:30 - 6:00 pm at Microsoft NERD in Cambridge. From the invitation by Bob Buderi:

“As computing enters what many analysts agree is its fifth great historical cycle (after mainframes, minicomputers, PCs, and the desktop Internet), New England companies are poised to lead in many areas--including mobile application development, infrastructure, and advertising. But the platforms and markets are evolving fast. At Xconomy's Mobile Madness conference, keynoters and panelists from the region's leading mobile technology companies will help participants make sense of the chaos and separate the solid innovation opportunities from the hype.”

Confirmed Speakers & Participants Include:
Wendy Caswell, CEO, Zink
Walt Doyle, CEO, uLocate
Chuck Goldman, CEO, Apperian
Will Wang Graylin, CEO, Roam Data
Kate Imbach, Vice President, Marketing, Skyhook Wireless; Organizer, Mobile Monday Boston
Mark Lowenstein, Managing Director, Mobile Ecosystem
Dan Olschwang, CEO, Jumptap
Greg Raiz, CEO, Raizlabs
Jhonatan Rotberg, Executive Director, Next Billion Network
Jake Shapiro, Executive Director, Public Radio Exchange
Dan Sullivan, Founder, Appswell
Mark Thirman, Vice President, Business Development, Illume Software

I have also signed up for the Tech Tuesday mobile event which immediately follows the Xconomy forum and showcase reception. Tech Tuesday requires separate registration.

So it is official, Mad Mobile races the March Hare,  in Mass., in March. Be there.

Larry Ellison, Cloud Contrarian

We cloud believers should find it intellectually refreshing to confront a heretic. We find a famous one in “Larry Kills Sun's Cloud: A Sign or Spleen?" by Michael Neubarth in CIOzone(TM):

“After Larry Ellison’s public displays of ridicule and contempt towards cloud computing, it came as no surprise when Oracle, in its recent briefing event to disclose its plans for Sun’s technology, listed Sun’s Open Cloud initiative among the casualties.

“’We don't plan on being in the rent-by-minute computer business,’ Oracle chief corporate architect Edward Screven was widely quoted as saying.

“Meanwhile, it’s unclear whether cloud computing is a major disruption or an overhyped fad that will blow over. The predominant view of analysts is that the traditional software business of Oracle and other vendors, including IBM and Microsoft, is threatened by the cloud. Gartner recently made the bold prediction that 20% of all businesses would have no IT assets by 2012 because of movement to the cloud.”

Competing with Amazon and Google in the cloud certainly threatens profit margins. Yet unlike Oracle, other major vendors that have reason to be threatened are fielding cloud offerings and presenting themselves as pro-cloud—including IBM with Blue Cloud and Microsoft with Azure.

And the cloud isn’t the only threat to current industry practices. Here in the Boston region, Xconomy has taken a leadership role in cloud advocacy. Xconomy also organizes seminars on mobile computing, which certainly presents an even greater threat to traditional software pricing and delivery than does the cloud. If the triad of smart phones, the cloud, and virtual technology are truly IT's Perfect Storm, then Ellison’s yacht, however large, may well be sailing toward perilous conditions.

Although Oracle has announced the termination of Sun Open Cloud, the technology has already been developed, so it could simply be put on ice and, if the cloud does take off, be resurrected in the future says Neubarth.

“Was killing the Sun Cloud a savvy move on Oracle’s part, a deep reading of the market’s pulse by Ellison, or an act of spite, born of frustration? Will Larry be vindicated when Oracle conquers the data center, or will his animosity towards the cloud come back to bite Oracle?”

Xconomy Cloud3 Presentations Available

I attended Xconomy’s Cloud3 Forum last month (December 10). Once again, they attracted a sellout crowd of 220 professionals. To reduce the strain of taking detailed notes, I asked moderator Wade Roush if he could post the presentations online. Seven companies allowed this; you can download and review them here.


Posted are presentations from seven speakers :Tom Leighton at Akamai, Joe Chung at Allurent, Michael Feinberg at EMC, Jim Cuff from Iron Mountain, Hasan Alkhatib at Microsoft, Anand Rajarem at Pixily, and last, (but very far from least) Greg Arnette from Sonian.

During the lectures, we used the Twitter “backchannel” to collect audience comments. Here are a few from a well respected local technologist you can use as a guide to the presentations:

“#xcloud EMC's Feinstein describing Atmos hybrid/federated cloud strategy.. damn good ideas.. from a Mass co.. How come nobody knows?

“#xcloud Conf terrific after coffee break.. Caffeine got the animal spirits stirring! EMC Cloudman Feinstein giving meaty talk'

"#xcloud Ex-Microsoftie, now Googler @dondodge blogging on his new Mac! .. no Win VM methinks

"#xcloud Breaking News! Microsoft's Vision detailed in today's presentation!

"#xcloud. 25 min into Azure prez and finally substance.. Azure GA on New Years Day, billing on Feb 1, 2010. But WHAT is still mystery.

"#xcloud MS Azure speaker giving Cloud 101 speech to Cloud grad students. Instead of pablum, how bout substance. What will it be? When?

"#xcloud Greg Arnette fm Sonian speaking.. Probably the sharpest cloud tech East of the Valley

"#xcloud Conference: Iron Mountain speaker.. Nothing new here... Next!"

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I am currently reviewing the Azure presentation. If you are interested in Microsoft’s Azure, a new paper by David Chappell, "Introducing Windows Azure",was posted on the Azure Website in December.