Macenstein

Hmmm… Well, this is rather scandalous. It seems that both the named companies to receive iFund funds for iPhone application development thus far (out of over 1700 applicants) have deep ties to Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the group overseeing the fund, with one in particular, iControl, even having a KPCB partner on its board… I suppose that’s one way to put your application on the fast track…

[via a comment on digg.com]

“John Doerr stood on the stage at Macworld ’08 and said that he wanted to fund the next Google or Amazon. Ok……… The only two companies to have received funding are Pelago and iControl. Pelago has already received funding from KPCB and Jeff Bezos (2006) and Doerr sits on the board of iControl. WTF?????”

From iControl’s web site:

John Doerr
Director
John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where he and his fellow partners have backed many of America’s best entrepreneurial leaders, including the founders of Google, Amazon, Intuit, Sun, Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec. In 1974 John joined a small chipmaker, Intel, just as they invented the legendary 8080 microprocessor. He worked in engineering, marketing and became a top-ranked sales executive. John joined KPCB in 1980, where soon after his arrival he served as founding CEO of Silicon Compilers, a VLSI CAD software company, and co-founder of @Home, the first broadband cable Internet service.

John is a techie and inventor, holding patents for computer memory devices. He earned a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Rice University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

From Pelago’s site:

Pelago was initially self-funded by Jeff and Darren and closed Series A with the investors below in November of 2006.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Menlo Park, CA
Since its founding in 1972, KPCB has backed entrepreneurs in over 475 ventures, including AOL, Align Technology, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq Computer, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Genomic Health, Google, IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Lotus, LSI Logic, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, VeriSign and Xilinx. More than 150 of the firm’s portfolio companies have gone public. Many other ventures have achieved success through mergers and acquisitions.

Bellevue, WA
Trilogy Equity Partners was founded by successful veterans of the wireless industry, including the executive team that founded Western Wireless and VoiceStream. Trilogy’s partners have started new companies in emerging industries and have built enduring businesses across four continents. Trilogy’s portfolio companies benefit from its operational expertise and its global network of relationships in addition to its financial investment.