“Earlier this year, Apple surprised us all when Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers announced it would support the iPhone by creating a standalone $100 million iFund focused on making investments in companies building iPhone applications. Six months later, KPCB has written five checks, and the iPhone has turned out to be a dynamic marketplace with millions of applications being downloaded by tons of eager users,” Tricia Duryee reports for mocoNews. “Today, I caught up with Matt Murphy, who is managing the iPhone-focused fund, to discuss everything from the potential opportunity that the iPhone represents to what’s next for mobile to Google Android and the recent announcement that Cyriac Roeding, the former EVP of mobile at CBS, will be joining KPCB as an entrepreneur-in-residence.”
Duryee: Why did KPCB decide on creating a fund focused on one platform? Doesn’t that go against the grain of VC’s who like to diversify their risks?
Murphy: The way we look at the iPhone is that it is the leading platform, and by far has the most advanced data applications. Over time, most companies [in the fund] will eventually diversify to other platforms, so it’s not solely a bet on one platform. But if you are going to try to launch a company right now, and you want to operate on an open platform, the iPhone is the best device because it has a user base that’s anxiously awaiting new applications and they are using it 30x compared to other devices. The iPhone is the place to be. One of the statistics we’ve been looking at is the figure Steve Jobs quoted of there being 60 million downloads in the first 30 days. If you strip out ringtones and wallpaper sales for all the U.S. carriers combined, that’s more downloads than they have in an entire quarter. That means 10 million iPhone users are outselling the entire U.S. market of 250 million mobile devices. So, it’s not risky in that sense. That’s where the traffic is, and that’s where there’s an open environment.
Much more in the full article here.
[Attribution: Distorted-Loop. Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Chuckles the Microsoft CEO” for the heads up.]
