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."
