Filed under: iPhone
iFund taken out for a Whrrl
At the iPhone SDK event back in March one of the most curious announcements was the existence of the $100 million iFund. Famed silicon valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers established it to "fund innovators developing applications, services, and components for Apple's iPhone and iPod touch platform." Now BusinessWeek is reporting the first two public iFund recipients: Whrrl and iControl.Whrrl is a kind of location based social networking service that allows you to "discover places, movies, and events by seeing where your friends are going." You can read (and leave) reviews of stores, restaurants, etc. Unfortunately, it's limited to 17 metro areas but they say new cities are being added regularly.
iControl produces home monitoring and control products. So your iPhone would allow you to control home automation products (e.g. climate system, lighting, etc.) as well as monitor in home cameras and other security systems.
Kleiner Perkins reports receiving over 1700 applications for the iFund and in addition to these two has made an offer to another, as yet undisclosed, startup. They are "seriously considering another 10."
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Brett said 10:21AM on 5-28-2008
What only 2 (possibly 3) so far?!!
I can't believe this, isn't it outrageous?
I doubt all of these 1700 submissions would suck. This iFund smells fishy to me.
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krisa said 10:21AM on 5-28-2008
Whrrl seems to fit rather well with GPS...
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LD said 10:38AM on 5-28-2008
iControl seems fairly stupid as there is nothing that inherently requires an iPhone/Touch. The same could be done via any web interface using any PDA or touchscreen device capable of displaying a web page. In fact, such things have existed for years, many open source.
This is what happens when venture capital is run simply by business people and does not include feedback from "geeks" who probably know more about what's out there.
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fishbert said 12:43PM on 5-28-2008
Nothing "requires" and iPhone or iPod Touch...
I have an iControl system (bought it after my home was robbed -- it can SMS my phone when a sensor is tripped), and I am really looking forward to more integration of their service with my iPhone.
Stretch said 11:01AM on 5-28-2008
You know KPCB is already a venture investor in both of these companies, right? What a surprise that they were the first two chosen! Not.
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Mason said 1:55PM on 5-28-2008
You spelled Whrrl wrong in the title.
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