![Mar. [Explore]](http://static.flickr.com/4083/4950621171_7bcd1ab457_t.jpg "Mar. [Explore]")
We recently revealed that $23.3 million had flown to Twitter-oriented startups from venture capitalists and angel firms (as of May 2009). Arguably, the other hot story in tech land is the iPhone and so we wanted to peer into the ChubbyBrain startup database and see how much money has been invested in startups predicated on the iPhone platform.
A brief recap
Applications for the iPhone were initially released in mid-2007 on iTunes when there were merely 500 available for download. Earlier this year, Apple saw their one billionth download from the App Store. Today, less than two years after the iPhone’s launch, the number of applications on the Apple App Store is greater than 50,000 according to some estimates.
Of these applications, it’s evident that a significant portion of them reside in either of two extreme ends of the spectrum that are likely not relevant to the VC/angel investing community: 1) established companies seeking some sort of presence on the iPhone to increase their brand’s awareness or product/service reach or 2) individual developers building cheap, viral applications who are enthusiasts/hobbyists or those hoping to catch lightning in a bottle.
But what about the middle of the spectrum? Who are the startups looking to build scalable businesses with the iPhone at the core, and more specifically, who is funding such efforts? After a look into the ChubbyBrain database, we identified $102.49 million in total VC/angel investment divided amongst 17 iPhone application startups (as of June 29, 2009). Perhaps this $100M+ number isn’t surprising given conversation that the iPhone may be bigger than the PC, but over $100 million in the span of less than two years for iPhone predicated startups is noteworthy. Or perhaps for some of you, this number is a lot less than you expected?
The following analysis takes a deeper look at these investments with a focus on what startups are receiving money, which investors are supplying funds, the amounts of these investments, as well as other interesting trends/statistics that may have implications for the future in this space and/or be helpful to investors or app developers hoping to understand what has gone on to-date.
It’s worth noting that we limited the scope of this study to startups whose core functionality/capability is centered on the iPhone. For example, Facebook is a venture-backed company who also have an iPhone application. However, they do not qualify for inclusion in this study because their iPhone Application is complimentary, not core, to their business. Admittedly, this delineation was a bit of art and science but our aim was to remove those startups who might be building mobile apps or tools across platforms, e.g., iPhone, Android, Symbian, etc or where the iPhone element was complementary but adjacent to their core business. And so our $100 million number focuses on those startups who are tethering themselves in a large way to the iPhone platform.
So far, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers leads the way with $50 million committed across six startups. This is, in large part, due to the $100 million iFund they launched in March 2008 with the specific goal to target the quickly expanding iPhone app market.
See full report: http://bit.ly/nGktF
