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INTRODUCTION → 1. The Planet Goes BlackBerry → 2. The Birth of the BlackBerry → 3. Lawsuits in Motion → → 4. From Brand to Icon → 5. BlackBerry Jam → 6. The Rise of the TeleBrain →

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WELCOME / INDEX - SAMPLE CHAPTER → DEVICES → Image Gallery → Audio/Video → Texts & Docs → Web Links → Appendix →

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From BlackBerry Planet Web Support

Appendix - Glossary → Timeline → Financials → Growth → Patents | Cases → Bibliography → Partners Fund → Techno Telepathy

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In the Spring of 2008, news broke that Palo Alto vencap veterans Kleiner Perkins and Apple were starting a $100 million fund for iPhone developers. It also appeared that other major competitors like Nokia, with its OVI and N-Gage services, were speeding in the same direction. Prodded to act quickly, and better rationalize how it backed outside developers, RIM roused itself and moved briskly to plug that hole in the dike.

The new BlackBerry Partners Fund, based in Toronto, was launched on May 12, with $150 million in funding from RIM, RBC and Thomson Reuters, its mission to spur new mobile apps and services. Funding would be "agnostic," and not restricted to any single mobile platform or any specific industry segment. Platforms would include "mobile commerce (payments, advertising, retailing and banking), vertical and horizontal enterprise applications, location-based and location-aware applications and services (navigation and mapping), communications, social networking, media and entertainment, and lifestyle and personal productivity applications."

Co-managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners, and led by John Albright and Kevin Talbot, the fund was looking for companies with:

• Potential product and market leadership
• Competitive differentiation
• Strong management teams
• Clear revenue & cost model

Talbot and Albright were soon knee deep in thousands of business plans. By the end of October their team had worked through the pile, and said they were backing three new ventures to start:

• Israel-based WorldMate, whose MobiMate helps travelers by keeping track of delayed flights; raised $8 million in a Series C Preferred Stock financing with BlackBerry Partners Fund, Motorola Ventures and AMC Communications.
• Austin-based Digby, a mobile commerce service provider, which helps retailers set up web stores for cellphone screens; raised $5.5 million Series B Preferred Stock with the BlackBerry Partners Fund and existing shareholders.
• New York City's buzzd, which makes a location-sensitive city guide that recommends nearby stores and events; raised $3.2 million in a Series A Preferred Stock financing with BlackBerry Partners Fund, Greycroft Partners, Monitor Ventures and Qualcomm Ventures.

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Developers, Developers, Developers

RIM held its first Silicon Valley developers' conference, in October 2008, in Santa Clara, California. The company was expecting 600 attendees and got 900 commercial and corporate developers from 27 countries. At the conference, the BlackBerry Partners Fund seeded two grand prize winners with $150,000 investments to further develop their applications. Moving in the same direction as Apple, Google and Microsoft, RIM also poured the foundations for its online applications store to market mobile apps, add-ons and games.