Kleiner Perkins iFund doubles to $200m, investing in iPad apps from Shazam, ngmoco and more
By Nilay Patel 
posted March 31st 2010 2:44PM
posted March 31st 2010 2:44PM
Apple said it expects the iPad to be a "second gold rush" of app development as consumers rush to add content to their new devices, and it looks like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers agrees: the venture capital firm just announced that it's expanding the iFund to $200 million to invest in iPad app development. If you'll recall, the iFund was originally announced alongside the iPhone OS 2.0 SDK, and provided $100 million in total investments to 14 iPhone app developers like Shazam, ngmoco, and Shopkick -- companies responsible for 18 apps that have hit the App Store Top 10. Keep in mind that this money was promised before the iPhone App Store was even launched -- so given how that bet paid off, it's not surprising that KPCB's decided to double down on the iPad, which looks like it'll have even higher app prices. Along with the announcement, some iFund devs announced the following iPad apps:- Pinger: Doodle Buddy and Starsmash
- Booyah: MyTown, a popular location-based game
- Shazam: Shazam, optimized for the new screen size,
- ngmoco: Flick Fishing, a new MMO called CastleCraft, Charadium (described as "massively multiplayer Pictionary"), God Finger, We Rule, WarpGate, and one more we missed -- anyone catch it?
- GOGII: TextPlus
Rolando!
@mightyjamesyoung
Who The F is that?
I like this.
@mightyjamesyoung oh Fernando!
how does 14 iphone apps = $100 million?
@elistuy R&D
@elistuy
and how much L33t programming does it take to "optimize" Shazam for a bigger screen?? :thud:
Just remember that Apple has no part in setting these prices. This "gold rush" greed that causes Shazam iPad to cost 300% more than Shazam iPod is fully due to the developers.
The market will even itself out after a couple months though, once they realize that most people have no interest in paying $4.99 for Flight Control "HD". Don't worry. We will see PLENTY of good, free/99cent iPad apps, and maybe some paid app developers will allow a free port to the iPad.
It's HARD to get your app to appear in the top 10. Selling it for more than it's worth is going to cause you more harm than good. Developers know this.
@MoonWalkerCTE - "R&D"
Are you fucking kidding me? In general, these apps are RIDICULOUSLY easy to program.
Sure you have apps like TomTom's nav app, or Shazam, which are the exceptions, and obviously require a HUGE initial investment of time/money, but these types of apps represent an extremely small sect of all the apps out there.
Fart apps, Flight Control, Bejeweled.... not so much "R&D"
@crawdad689
Agree. Shazam app for iPhone/iPod touch is supposed to work in Ipad. I will be running it in small screen or doubled pixellated version to find the song in my Ipad. But the thing is I am not buying Ipad.
@elistuy
Ridiculous Apple developer license and app fees. And all those damn hoops you have to jump through.
Well ok, it isn't that much, but it's still really ridiculous. Anyone who has actually attempted to develop for (non-jailbroken) iPhone OS knows what I'm talking about.
@paul34
Still its 100 MILLION F@#$ing DOLLARS, for 14 apps... 14!
@crawdad689
Uh... new apps that don't exist on the iPhone...
where's my Nobel prize
Friend: "Hey what's this song?
You: "Don't know, let me get out my iPad." *holds up iPad to the speaker with Shazam open*
Friend: "Hey what's this song?"
You: "Don't know, let me google the lyrics on my (insert name of any phone with internet access here)!!!"
@Drago
+1
It takes WAYYY less time to Google "'word1 word2 word3 word4' lyrics" than it takes to load shazam, hold it up to a speaker, upload to their servers, and pray that there isn't too much ambient noise for the damn thing to work.
@Drago Try that with foreign language or instrumental music.
I was downranked for commenting on the hilarity of using Shazam on an iPad? Really? Alright then.
@parabola
im with you man, shazam seems kinda weird for the ipad, i get when youre at a bar or something and you pull out your phone, but pulling out the ipad seems strange
@AdmiralKlingon Wow, the haters are out en masse. You had a valid point there.
@parabola
Do people hate instrumental music here? I can't figure out why AdmiralKlingon was downranked. Most of what I listen to is instrumental. He makes a good point, you can't google the lyrics if there aren't any lyrics. You have to use something like shazam or midomi.
@AdmiralKlingon I don't understand why you were downranked in to oblivion. I totally think that instrumental songs is where Shazam would shine the most.
@Drago
Yeah I wonder if that program would have any trouble with non-mainstream music such as D'n'B.
@Drago
My friend has an android phone that has an app that does this and it takes all of 5 seconds to load...
sony ericsons have had this feature for a while...
just saying, theres many better ways of finding a song (instrumental or not) theres no point trying to insult google because youre so far up apples butt you cant see the other products...
No eliminate pro then? :'(
No doubt Cro-Mag will be there at launch, 'cos the dev knows that it sucks, so they'll want to cash in early with all the new impulse buyers, before the reviews come in.
Ooh yes, where would I be without my Pinger and booyah applications! :( Is this what its all about, that has made the iphone so popular and caused MS to throw out useful features like MULTI TASKING and SD Card support!!???
@theefman
dude you're a moron. MS didn't "throw away" multi-tasking because they figured "if apple can get by without it, then so can we." They threw it out because it's imperfect (and frankly not highly-demanded by non-ENGADGET readers). Copy and Paste was thrown out b/c nobody really uses it. Accept it, bro. Apple got it all right (on their first shot, no less), and everybody else is following suit.
Except that none of us don't fully understand 7 Series' multitasking methods. You just heard no the first time and threw a hissy. Same went for clipboard, and SD card. The damn thing is half a year away and you already have your minds made up on speculative and partial details. But hey, that stopped plenty of people from getting an iPhone, right?
"Nothing too surprising here, but it looks like the heavy hitters are going to be on the iPad bandwagon from day one -- and pushing hard for this thing to be a success."
Passive aggressive, much? Is somebody bitter that Apple's app store is an unqualified, undisputed runaway success? Using words like "bandwagon" to describe these investors is a bit misguided.
@TomSawyer I see you're dipping your spoon deep into the sodium chloride. You shouldn't take offense to small things like this...
@TomSawyer Nilay has a "special" way of reporting on Apple. Its like when a husband beats his wife because he "loves her so much" You get used to it.
@TomSawyer You people are weird.
@Nilay Patel
Since I can't uprank you, I will just imagine i press an imaginary "+" button.
@kitsune That's why/how you ended up hitting the "reply" button :), in the same place. But it did deserve one.
I have an oil drilling start-up that I think they might be interested in...
Good
Holy crap, the CSS just puked badly-formatted content all over my browser.
Please try to tag it with apple so that those who aren't interested in apple news could keep their RSS uncluttered.
Who the hell is going to use Shazam on their iPad over their mobile device? This is just stupid.
Now is a good time to learn how to write apps. Where can I learn? =o
as a developer, I really wish I had a killer idea to submit for the iPad... as there will be a gold rush but when ever I start developing an app... my full time work quality goes down hill though. I envy full time developers.
My apps are under "Modern Geek"