Updated: More Details On The $100 Million Kleiner Perkins iFund
By Staci D. Kramer - Thu 06 Mar 2008 01:21 PM PST
Some more details on John Doerr’s announcement at Apple’s (NSDQ: AAPL) iPhone event today that Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has a new $100 million iFund ...
From the Kleiner Perkins release: “The iFund, managed by KPCB, will be invested in companies with market-changing ideas and products that extend the revolutionary new iPhone and iPod touch platform. Apple will provide KPCB with market insight and support.” Apple CEO Steve Jobs: “Developers are already bursting with ideas for the iPhone and iPod touch, and now they have the chance to turn those ideas into great companies with the help of world-class venture capitalists.”
-- iFund will be led by KPCB partner Matt Murphy in collaboration with partners John Doerr, Bill Joy, Randy Komisar, Ted Schlein, Chi-Hua Chien and Ellen Pao.
-- initiative will be “agnostic to stage and size of investment” with a focus on areas including location-based services, social networking, mCommerce, communication, entertainment
-- iFund is looking for entrepreneurs pursuing “transformative ideas with the potential to become standalone, public companies.”
-- As important as capital in many cases, KPCB will help on the company-building side.
Tricia adds from Cupertino: During his stage appearance, Doerr congratulated Jobs on the excellent job he is doing as Apple’s CEO, calling him the “supreme commander of the rebels” and asking the audience to salute “The world’s greatest entrepreneur, Steve Jobs.”
“We are all here today because we love Apple products,” he said, adding that he “really loves Apple entrepreneurs—they do more than anyone thinks possible with less than what people think is possible.” The reason behind the iFund is because “new platforms are very rare, but they can be transformational.” He joked with the audience about how they pondered how much the iFund should be; he elaborated that EA took a few million to fund, Amazon.com (NSDQ: AMZN) received $8 million, and $24 million went to Google (NSDQ: GOOG). So, they made it $100 million enough to build “a dozen Amazons and four Googles.”
Posted in: Companies, Apple, Money, VC M&A, Venture Capital
Tags: kleiner perkins caufield & byers, iphone,
