Follow The Money: VCs Weigh In On Mobile
Notes from the “Follow the Money, Part II: The Investors Weigh In” panel at the AppNation Conference in September 2010
Panelists:
- Simon Khalaf, Flurry (moderator)
- Matt Murphy, iFund/Kleiner Perkins
- Gaurav Garg, Sequoia
- Rich Wong, Accel
Are we in an app bubble? Panel consensus is no.
What are VCs looking for?
- Murphy: if you are coming in with the next check-in service, you better have 100,000 active daily users; but sometimes the idea is so good that having no users doesn’t matter (examples: Flipboard, Dropbox)
- Garg: if you’re in a crowded space like gaming, we really want to see a lot of maturity and lots of users; the rules aren’t too different from the web in that regard
- Wong: if you can create a data set that’s useful to other people, that’s another path to monetization
What do you see happening in the mobile market over the next few years?
- Wong: the Android business will emerge in the next 12-18 months, and there’s a good opportunity in helping to create that ecosystem. It won’t achieve the scale of the Apple store in that period, but there will be substantial movement.
- Garg: It’s not clear to me that Google is as focused on developers as Microsoft or Apple, and Android is hugely fragmented
- Wong: If Android is going to become truly viable as a business, it needs investment and support, even though device volumes will accelerate
- Murphy: Android needs a better app store, and to sort out billing
Notable Tweets from during the session:
- @Marinperez: “We haven’t seen enough innovation with iPad apps. Many are just blown up iPhone apps”
- @kirasong: less than 3-5 (app related) companies per year have potential to become big, says rich wong of accel partners
- @Marinperez: Wong - We’re a little bit cautious (about investing) because we’re not sure what metrics to look for
- @Aprilgeer: For companies to invest more dollars, mobile needs better tracking, 3rd party research, standardization to instill confidence