Consulting firm Herman Blackbook is launching a new micro-fund today for application developers who want to build stuff on top of “Twitter, Boxee, AppNexus, Trulia, iPhone, and more” called the New Platforms Fund. The catch? They’ll invest only “$1-3,000” (I hope that’s $1,000, not $1, but whatever) in exchange for equity and they are only investing in “up to 10 cutting edge ideas.”
This capital is supposed to get entrepreneurs to an alpha stage, when they’ll go out and pitch for more money, from someone else.
Update: VCwear is introducing the $100 fund; they will invest that amount in t-shirts for the dumbest Twitter app you can come up with.
For the sake of comparison, the size of Kleiner Perkins’ iFund is $100 million, and it focuses only on applications for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.
Let’s be honest. There is very little reason for an entrepreneur/developer to apply for the New Platforms Fund. Incubator micro-funds like Y Combinator, TechStars and Seedcamp don’t give you much in the way of capital ($15k-$20k), but at least it’s enough to live on for a few months while you work on your idea. And those funds have very deep connections in the venture capital world to get you your first round of capital after you’ve spent their initial funds. It’s not clear at all that this new fund can do any of that for you.
If you’ve tried raising from the other guys, your friends, family and anyone else who’ll talk to you and no money is coming, I guess you could give the New Platforms Fund a try. Just don’t quit your day job. Application is here.