iPhone DevCamp Searches For The Perfect App

The fund still requires a leap of faith by investors. Not being publicly traded, it offers neither the regulatory disclosure nor the constant opinion of the marketplace to tell them how its portfolio is performing. But Lam has an answer to that too, one that might reassure the fund’s own investors in the short term and potentially generate big revenue from its peers down the road.

The iPhoenix Fund has developed an application that will allow investors (and eventually anyone interested) to monitor the sales data of the apps in the portfolio in real time. Once they have enough data to make it worthwhile to the public, Lam plans to make it one of the most expensive apps ever. He believes that the data available through this app would be invaluable to game publishers and developers.

Danny Robinson is the managing director of Bootup Labs, a Vancouver-based seed fund and startup accelerator and he likes the idea of the iPhoenix fund-monitoring app so much he wants to copy it.

“Doing reports and getting things like that back to the investors is costly and time-consuming. Large funds can afford to hire people to do that stuff but with these micro-funds we have to find more innovative, smart and efficient ways to manage the fund itself,” says Robinson. “We’ve always envisioned an extranet where investors could log in and check their portfolio, but the iPhoenix Fund has taken it to another level by creating their iPhone app. You can be sitting in your house and hit the button and see how you’re doing and that’s pretty revolutionary.”

Bootup Labs raises $2 million and invests in 12 different digital media companies, typically web-based startups, a year. Aside from seed funding, it offers mentorship and marketing savvy to attract talent, similar to a business incubator. Robinson sees parallels between what’s happened in Vancouver with Bootup Labs and what could happen in Alberta with the iPhoenix Fund.

“Any time you can create a critical mass of people working in a similar space, that critical mass creates its own gravity, which attracts more people to do the same thing,” he says.

As the bubbly host and vice-president of marketing and development of BnetTV.com, Michelle Sklar has met with nearly 5,000 companies, associations and analysts in the wireless industry over the past five years. Sklar sees a lot more opportunity in developing applications for business rather than entering an oversaturated entertainment market.

“What’s really fascinating to me is how different industries are embracing wireless technology and what you can do with mobile handsets to better deal with their own business processes. There is this huge gap in the applications that could be developed that are outside of entertainment,” she says.

Sklar uses the example of Curve Dental, a Calgary-based company that delivers dental office management solutions through the web. It is currently porting its services to the iPhone platform with an in-house development team. “People might not think that dental is sexy, but people in that industry have a real need for useful applications that can help them with their business.”

The eventual success or failure of the iPhoenix Fund rests on a familiar business refrain: creating a product that the public will want to buy. The rub lies in separating yourself from the 100,000 other apps available – perhaps double or triple that number by this time next year.

“If there is one thing lacking from the iPhone platform, it’s a clear way to market,” concedes Lam. Still, Lam is hopeful. He calls this his guinea pig fund, and if it does well he’s planning for a second, much larger fund.

It may not do well, but even then Lam and others will have learned something that will prove useful to the growing cadre of wireless developers in Calgary. And given the speed with which that market niche is evolving, we won’t have to wait long to see how it turns out.

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