Facebook gets its own seed-funding program (TheDeal.com)
AppFactory July 10th, 2007
|
George White at TheDeal.com writes:
Facebook Inc.’s decision to open up its application programming interface, or API, spurred an avalanche of new programs for the social-networking giant and created enough buzz for Bay Partners to start a fast-track approval process, dubbed AppFactory, for startups developing programs for the platform.
The Silicon Valley early-stage venture capital firm plans to make “tens of investments” ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 in startups creating Facebook programs. Salil Deshpande, a partner at Bay Partners, describes AppFactory as a “seed program on steroids.”
Bay Partners’ decision to set up the program was prompted by the notion that F8 turns Facebook into the first social-networking operating system. The hope is that F8 will, like Windows and Unix, become a development platform for all kinds of lucrative third-party applications. “Historically, the creation of an operating system, or a platform, has always led to a new economy of applications designed for that platform and its user base,” explains Deshpande.
Because Facebook holds the first-mover’s advantage, Deshpande thinks that when other social-networking sites open up their APIs — and MySpace.com and LinkedIn Corp. have already announced they will — the market will necessitate that theirs work with F8’s. —George White
Stacey Higginbotham at TheDeal.com writes:
At the recent iPhoneDevCamp, California college student cum freelance Web designer David Stillman experienced in a few hours what many fledgling tech businesses and their backers often endure over months of sweat equity. The Wiki-style event was an unofficial development conference for the iPhone, organized by volunteers and free to the public. It was the place to be over the weekend if you had an innovative iPhone startup idea, or wanted to invest in one.
At the conference, Stillman stumbled upon another developer with just such an idea, and he quickly became caught up in the plans to form a new company around it. Even a couple of venture capitalists appeared interested. Everything was going great. And then his bubble burst. “Right when we were getting into the meat of it, a group of four guys walked up and demoed the exact app we were working on that they started building two weeks ago. We were all a bit dumbfounded — not angry — when the VCs gave the other guys their cards and walked away. We had a company in the making, and it was disbanded before it even came together.”
Hopefully, Stillman was smart enough to grab a couple of those business cards for himself. Who were those guys, anyway? Perhaps a couple of VCs from Bay Partners, which just launched a seed fund for startups developing applications for Facebook? —Stacey Higginbotham
Tags: AppFactory
About
Leave a Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.