500 Startups just launched a new mobile-focused fund. Here’s what they’re looking for

Greg Kidd, seed investor of Twitter; Joe Wu, co-founder of 91 Mobile (acquired by Baidu for US$1.9 billion); Jay Sullivan, former CEO of Firefox; Yongzhi Yang, founder of Dolphin Browser – these are a few of the advisors and partners of a new mobile-focused fund from leading early stage investor 500 Startups. Managing the fund will be Edith Yeung, who ran business development for Dolphin Browser, and was herself a co-founder of angel investment firm RightVentures, where she made over 20 startup investments.

The collective mobile entrepreneurial experience of the people behind this fund gives it the street smarts to help startup founders negotiate those blind curves on the mobile business road – such as access to carriers and OEMs (original equipment manufacturers), distribution, and monetization. Hence the name ‘Mobile Collective’.

Dave McClure, founder of 500 Startups, which is already one of the most active investors in fledgling mobile-focused and mobile first businesses, tells Tech in Asia how the 500 Mobile Collective came about:

There is a need for people who have expertise in different sectors and also different regions… Edith is a friend I’ve known for quite some time. She has been involved in a lot of mobile companies in development and was thinking of doing her own fund. We were chatting one time and decided it would be great to have her in the 500 Startups network.

The 500 Mobile Collective will be a US$10 million microfund, which Yeung will manage, and the main 500 Startups fund will co-invest in most of the deals. They’re looking at investing in 30 to 50 companies around the world over the next two to three years.

Different keystrokes for different markets

Yeung, based in the US now, is originally from Hong Kong and has spent a lot of time in China, one of the most vibrant regions for mobile investments. She explains to Tech in Asia the importance of collaborating across borders, especially in the mobile domain.

One of our advisors in China is Joe Wu, who co-founded Chinese app store 91 Mobile, which got acquired by Baidu for US$1.9 billion. He doesn’t know much about the US market but he really understands China. The other way round is that I am very familiar with how to drive a business in the US. Personally, I have done a lot of partnerships with OEMs for Dolphin. Many of these conversations revolved around how you actually preload these apps on the phone itself. Those are some of the angles we will discuss with our portfolio startups and founders. That is very important in our line.

Yeung, who says she is just a few miles short of logging a million air miles, has become a great believer in different keystrokes for different markets. TrueCaller, for example – a Swedish mobile app which helps identify unknown callers – got a lukewarm response in the US, where users are squeamish about having their contact details on the cloud. But almost everyone Yeung met on a recent visit to India had it on their phone, probably because discovering caller identity is more of an issue there than privacy. Those are the sort of companies and apps, addressing pain points unique to specific markets, that she loves to discover.