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New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada

VentureBeat decided to jump the gun this weekend and post some news that has been floating around lately about a new Blackberry fund. They deleted the post from their blog, but it was still available in Google Reader and in other places and TechCrunch got to it late on Saturday.

The new fund is being managed by RBC Ventures, who just last week closed an investment in Toronto-Based Blackberry application Viigo, and JLA Ventures. RIM, maker of the Blackberry, is a limited partner in this fund, but is not involved in the day-to-day investment decisions.

The rumor mill has been churning away on this one for months here in Toronto. Originally the numbers we were hearing were $100 million, but as the weeks went by, people started to hint that things had heated up and there were partners involved up to $150 million. That number, $150M, turned out to be true.

Companies funded by the Blackberry Partners Fund do not have to be producing Blackberry applications yet. The press release says that the fund is “Agnostic to both stage and balance sheet, the BlackBerry Partners Fund will not restrict the development of mobile applications and services to any single mobile platform or any specific industry segment.”, which is all true, but only companies who have a Blackberry Application in their roadmap will be funded.

The fund will be will be announced at WES in Orlando tomorrow morning.

It is interesting to note that RBC Ventures recently funded another Balsillie company, Igloo Software with $4M. Jim Balsillie, the CEO of RIM, is on the Board of Directors of Igloo Software, who closed their financing last week.

In talking to Rick Segal, one of the partners at JLA Ventures, about this new fund he put it very plainly: The test will be in 6 months when we look at how many deals have actually gotten done.

Will this be another Java Fund? I certainly hope not, espcially for Canadian companies who have a chance to connect with some known VCs and tap in to a strong fund with great connections to the maker of the most popular Web, Email and Voice device out there.

  1. I guess this is the fund that Rick was referring to during the VC Round Table that was being launched May 12.

    I look forward to the next few months!

    It’s also great to see the new BlackBerry 9000 enable Geo-Tagging of photos taken with it. Good step in the right direction.

  2. I guess this is the fund that Rick was referring to during the VC Round Table that was being launched May 12.

    I look forward to the next few months!

    It’s also great to see the new BlackBerry 9000 enable Geo-Tagging of photos taken with it. Good step in the right direction.

  3. Great news for the developer community but does this foreshadow RIM’s competitive concerns. Is this part of RIM’s strategy to help fend of the iPhone or even Google’s mobile OS? Why does a platform with such a strong and relatively mature install base need to promote developers onto its platform? One may conclude that RIM needs help and it is turning to outside innovation (which is a great thing). Regardless, RIM is well entrenched in the enterprise and it will be interesting to see what “consumer” and enterprise start-ups get funded. Even more interesting will be to see if there is a strategic theme to the fundings…e.g. extension of SAP like interoperability, Web 2.0 for the enterprise etc..

  4. Great news for the developer community but does this foreshadow RIM’s competitive concerns. Is this part of RIM’s strategy to help fend of the iPhone or even Google’s mobile OS? Why does a platform with such a strong and relatively mature install base need to promote developers onto its platform? One may conclude that RIM needs help and it is turning to outside innovation (which is a great thing). Regardless, RIM is well entrenched in the enterprise and it will be interesting to see what “consumer” and enterprise start-ups get funded. Even more interesting will be to see if there is a strategic theme to the fundings…e.g. extension of SAP like interoperability, Web 2.0 for the enterprise etc..

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Webmentions

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    […] One of Rick Segal’s favourite examples about new business ideas is a Blackberry app that would know when you’re in a meeting and silence the alerts and such.  No wonder then that he’d be involved in a startup fund for new Blackberry software: VentureBeat decided to jump the gun this weekend and post some news that has been floating around lately about a new Blackberry fund. They deleted the post from their blog, but it was still available in Google Reader and in other places and TechCrunch got to it late on Saturday. The new fund is being managed by RBC Ventures, who just last week closed an investment in Toronto-Based Blackberry application Viigo, and JLA Ventures. RIM, maker of the Blackberry, is a limited partner in this fund, but is not involved in the day-to-day investment decisions. The rumor mill has been churning away on this one for months here in Toronto. Originally the numbers we were hearing were $100 million, but as the weeks went by, people started to hint that things had heated up and there were partners involved up to $150 million. That number, $150M, turned out to be true. StartupNorth » Blog Archive » New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada […]

  • MapleLeaf 2.0 Venture Capital News: JLA Backed Blackberry Fund launches Monday March 29, 2009

    […] One of Rick Segal’s favourite examples about new business ideas is a Blackberry app that would know when you’re in a meeting and silence the alerts and such.  No wonder then that he’d be involved in a startup fund for new Blackberry software: VentureBeat decided to jump the gun this weekend and post some news that has been floating around lately about a new Blackberry fund. They deleted the post from their blog, but it was still available in Google Reader and in other places and TechCrunch got to it late on Saturday. The new fund is being managed by RBC Ventures, who just last week closed an investment in Toronto-Based Blackberry application Viigo, and JLA Ventures. RIM, maker of the Blackberry, is a limited partner in this fund, but is not involved in the day-to-day investment decisions. The rumor mill has been churning away on this one for months here in Toronto. Originally the numbers we were hearing were $100 million, but as the weeks went by, people started to hint that things had heated up and there were partners involved up to $150 million. That number, $150M, turned out to be true. StartupNorth » Blog Archive » New $150 million Blackberry Fund, based in Canada […]

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