Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of the iPhone’s biggest and earliest supporters, is doubling the size of its iFund to $200 million. The specialized venture capital fund, which was founded two years ago with the launch of the original iPhone, will now make investments in start-ups based on Apple’s family of products including the iPhone, iPod Touch and the iPad.
The announcement was made today in the venture firm’s Sand Hill Road offices and was broadcast over a fuzzy telephone line. But Kleiner’s John Doerr’s praise of Apple’s Steve Jobs came through resoundingly clear. He believes the launch of the iPad on Saturday marks the start of a new revolution in PCs: it sheds the tired user interface and replaces it with touch, and retires the click with a “swoosh,” he said. “It’s direct and natural. Instead of holding a mouse you are going to be holding magic.”
The fund had to be extended to make any further investments. In just two years, it had become fully committed with investments across 14 companies. In addition, Kleiner said iFund companies had been supported by an $330 million more from other investors.
So far, iFund-backed companies have already starting building more than 20 applications for the iPad with 11 expected to be available on April 3 when the device is available. Seven of them are games from ngmoco. Kleiner’s investment areas of interest on the iPad are broad and include entertainment, communication, social networking, commerce, health care, and education.
So far, it’s unclear how much success iFund-backed companies are doing since not one has had an exit, and perhaps, others are struggling. But Matt Murphy, who heads up the iFund, said in a release that the companies in aggregate have achieved more than $100 million in mobile revenues so far in 2010; and more than 100 million downloads.
Doerr is not the first one to call the iPad magic. The day the tablet was unveiled, Jobs called it “magical and revolutionary.” While Kleiner has the kind of money to bet on whether that’s true, the rest of us can wait until Saturday when it launches and we can see for ourselves. The big questions are: Will it change computing? Will it save the publishing world? And, will it become a $100 million-plus business opportunity, so that Kleiner can at least break even?
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