AppFactory Backing Facebook Platform Builders

By David A. Utter - Wed, 07/11/2007 - 12:36pm.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Bay Partners has opened its AppFactory program to provide fast-track funding to developers working on Facebook Platform. Developers, Bay Partners wants to help if you have an application to build on Facebook Platform. Their newly opened AppFactory program will deliver funding from $25,000 to $250,000 to promising entrepreneurs.

By providing the AppFactory service, Bay feels it can get promising projects onto a fast track toward developing a finished product. A well-crafted application that gains traction with Facebook users could be the core of a new business.

"The creation of an operating system, or a platform, has always led to a new economy which includes a marketplace of applications that are optimally designed for that platform and its user base," said Bay partner Salil Deshpande in a statement. "Bay wants to find the killer apps."

If they do find those applications, the return on one that becomes widely-adopted will look very promising. Facebook has a userbase that Bay pegs in the range of 29 million. If someone could grab one-tenth of one percent of those users, that's a nice base of some 29,000 people upon which to build.

News Tags: Application Development, AIM, Indeed, Bay Partners, facebook, Platform

About the author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Follow me on Twitter, and you can reach me via email at dutter @ webpronews dot com. Why not Mixx this article while you're here?

Comments

Submitted by Dave McClure (WPN reader) on Wed, 07/11/2007 - 3:14pm.

only 1/10th of 1%? aim higher!

hmm... actually i think there's tremendous opportunity to get more like 5-20% of Facebook users to adopt the better group of apps.

Slide has 8M users, perhaps ~20 other apps have >1M users, and ~50 apps have >100K users, in only about a month. that's pretty serious adoption.

for more thoughts on facebook app marketing & how to make friends & influence people, check out my post on the subject here:
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2007/07/marketing-faceb.html

enjoy ;)

- dave mcclure

Submitted by David A. Utter on Wed, 07/11/2007 - 6:17pm.

Aim high indeed

Hiya Dave,

Everyone has to start somewhere and think big. My thinking goes along the lines of building a small, loyal base first and nurturing it. As others see how well the base is being treated by an entrepreneur's development efforts, growth should follow.

The adoption rates you've cited are impressive. I like to see projects where the developers are slavishly devoted to building a great product. Gaining users is easy in comparison to keeping them. Great businesses keep their core happy over the long term.

Can someone approach a VC with such a modest initial goal in mind, or do they have to aim for the outer rim of the galaxy right out of the gate?

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