The iFund is a US$

United States dollar

The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....

200 million capital fund. Developers may enter into equity deals for the creation of applications, services, and components for Apple's iPhone

IPhone

The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...

, iPod Touch

IPod Touch

The iPod Touch is a portable media player, personal digital assistant, handheld game console, and Wi-Fi mobile device designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The iPod Touch adds the multi-touch graphical user interface to the iPod line...

 and iPad

IPad

The iPad is a line of tablet computers designed, developed and marketed by Apple Inc., primarily as a platform for audio-visual media including books, periodicals, movies, music, games, and web content. The iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010 by Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs. Its size and...

 platform. It is being offered and managed by venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 company Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB).

The iFund was announced by KPCB partner John Doerr

John Doerr

L. John Doerr is an American venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in Menlo Park, California, in Silicon Valley. In February 2009, Doerr was appointed as a member of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide the president and his administration with advice and...

 at the same time as the iPhone OS SDK

IPhone SDK

The iOS SDK is a software development kit developed by Apple Inc. and released in February 2008 to develop native applications for iOS.-History:...

, at Apple's iPhone Roadmap event on March 6, 2008 in Cupertino

Cupertino, California

Cupertino is an affluent suburban city in Santa Clara County, California in the U.S., directly west of San Jose on the western edge of the Santa Clara Valley with portions extending into the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. The population was 58,302 at the time of the 2010 census. Forbes...

, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. The iFund is managed by KPCB Partner Matt Murphy in collaboration with partners Chi-Hua Chien, John Doerr, Bill Joy

Bill Joy

William Nelson Joy , commonly known as Bill Joy, is an American computer scientist. Joy co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 along with Vinod Khosla, Scott McNealy and Andy Bechtolsheim, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003...

, Randy Komisar, Ellen Pao, and Ted Schlein. Apple provides KPCB with market insight and support. On March 31, 2010 KPCB announced the fund has been doubled.

On September 15, 2008, KPCB launched a blog

Blog

A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

 to share perspectives on the iFund.

In December 2008 the confidential iFund application data was accidentally published on the web by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’ former hosting provider, Meteora Technologies Group, in a database dump

Database dump

A database dump contains a record of the table structure and/or the data from a database and is usually in the form of a list of SQL statements. A database dump is most often used for backing up a database so that its contents can be restored in the event of data loss. Corrupted databases can often...

 file. The file was indexed by Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 and coincidentally discovered by a fruux

Fruux

fruux is a synchronization application and service operated by fruux. The service enables users to synchronize address book contacts, calendar events, tasks, bookmarks and notes between Apple computers and other devices....

 staffer. The file contained Applications from 588 companies including detailed information from each of these companies, like founder bios, financial ratios and business models.

External links

• KPCB iFund Initiative
  • Apply to the iFund
  • iFund VC, the iFund blog
    Blog
    A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
    
    
• Apple's iPhone developer information