Apps, as it turns out, need stuff, and stuff, as it ALSO turns out, costs money. Your time is yours and only costs you in opportunities and your great ideas (if you are so fortunate) may well be limitless, but lots of real (important) stuff comes with real hard costs and isn’t limitless for any of us.
There’s been lots of discussion on creating a successful business in the AppUp Developer Community. In response to this atIntel AppUp Elements
2011, we covered more business topics, from monetization strategies, business models and expansion to local markets to investor requirements (awesome discussions!). We also created programs that help you pay for stuff on your road to app success, including the Intel AppUp developer challenge and Intel AppUp Accelerator both designed to help you make money on your AppUp apps faster and easier. After two years of funding innovative application concepts, the Intel AppUp(SM) developer program: Accelerator has been end of lifed.
But even with seemingly exponential growth in great tools and services which simplify the creation of great software, the world has also become more complicated. Porting to multiple platforms and creating a successful business for each can be challenging. Content delivery and application development change faster every day. You tell us you want help in providing true cross-platform capabilities that don’t lock you into something you might regret later, and that also don’t skimp on taking full advantage of both the Internet and devices. So, today, I am very happy to highlight a big step forward in our initiatives to make your app business successful.
Intel Capital is Intel’s investment arm and at the Intel Capital Global Summit this morning, Arvind Sodhani and Renee James unveiled a $100 million Intel Capital AppUpSM Fund to invest in companies building super creative experiences for PCs and connected mobile devices. The Fund will invest equity in early and mid-to-late stage companies in key areas such apps, content, digital media, context-aware computing, tools and infrastructure.
While the investments will focus across multiple technologies and devices, key focus areas include cross-platform technologies such as HTML5 as well as experiences designed specifically for Ultrabooks. The fund will balance investments in later stage proven companies with early-stage investments in smart people with have great ideas they want to bring to life.
The initial two investments include Urban Airship, a mobile platform-as-a-service company and 4tiitoo, a German OSV and tablet device developer.
You can submit your business plan for evaluation here
We spoke about HTML5, Ultrabooks and the massive change in personal computing extensively at AppUp Elements. We know that developers are right in the *center* of this computing transformation, with the power to define and create new consumers experiences across various connected devices. This new fund provides a great opportunity for AppUp developers to take the lead in shaping these awesome experiences and also make a successful business on it.
As always, let me know what you think. Find me also on twitter (@PNBLive).
Green Belt
Comments
We witnessed some of the worst Technology Marketing ever seen last year, is it going to be repeated? There is NO community, a handful of Intel employees and a few bloggers who get flown around the world blogging about how they fly around the world.
The CMD Agency in Portland made money last year organizing a Taco Breakfast at SXSW that no one came to and that three ring circus in Seattle with Acrobats pouring colorful drinks to a group of non-drinkers and beer drinkers. How much money was that?
Only 10 developers could be found in all of San Francisco for the start-up bus, but somebody must have made money because their going to repeat this insanity for SXSW. It's NOT a respectful way to treat developers.
Too much money was spent sponsoring blogs on DDJ and RWH, never once saw these guys show-up for an AppUp Event.
I couldn't stop an AppUp Lab in my home town of NYC on August 4th, a HOT time in the city. Maybe 50 developers who didn't know the hotel was infamous for it's crawling critters attended at a cost of maybe $50K I watched as the CMD Agency's website grew last year.
I produced over 50 videos for AppUp and MeeGo and not one of the bloggers who were flown around the world ever linked to them and my pleas for AppUp advertising was never listen too. Recently there was an AppUp Facebook ad linking to a blog post by Bob Duffy with one of my videos embedded.
No one has yet articulated that AppUp isn't for Netbooks anymore and the Ultrabooks have arrived!
Always good to get feedback from the community. Our developer program has a community of over 28,000 developers who are engaged in the program. We are seeing some great content and apps come in to the program. Ultrabooks are an exciting new category that bring a whole new market opportunity for developers. In addition, at Intel AppUp Elements in September this year, we disclosed that the AppUp developer program is expanding to include support for PCs and Ultrabooks. Apps will be accepted in the program before the end of the year. Our vision for AppUp is to expand to multiple devices beyond the netbook – Ultrabooks, tablets, smartphones and more. Building community, organizing meetups, producing great content that helps developers be successful is an integral part of connecting with developers in our program. Appreciate the feedback as we work to continually improve our program.
I would like to know if the fund will apply only for paid apps.
What if we want to give away free copies of good quality software? What if we want the software platform to expand and benefit the end user? We sincerely believe that free is key nowadays.
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