Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have formed the “Glass Collective”, an organisation which they say will support entrepreneurs who are developing innovative apps on Google’s unreleased Glass technology.
Three of America’s top venture capital funds have come together to provide seed funding for entrepreneurs who are developing on Google Glass. The ‘Glass Collective’, as the group is calling itself, will be offering “seed funding to startups working on creative, diverse, and crazy ideas that are shaping the future through Glass”.
Google Glass Collective
Here’s their announcement;
“Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers have teamed up to form the Glass Collective.
We’re excited by the promise of the Glass platform. Developers are already dreaming up new experiences for Glass, and we want to help bring those ideas to life.
The Glass Collective investment syndicate will provide financing and support to entrepreneurs shaping the future through Glass.”
According to the group’s site, developers and entrepreneurs will be able to submit ideas to any of the founding firms (Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, or KPCB), and partners in each of these will review applications and forward these onto the collective. The reason for this, according to the group is to identify the signal in the expected noise of applications.
“We have a better chance of understanding your vision If we hear about your business directly, or through our friends and associates.”
As for the types of start-ups, the collective says it’s looking for the kinds of apps that have been most successful in the smartphone ecosystem; such as, “messaging, sharing, search, and navigation”. But the group also wants to see what new kinds of hardware can be created that works with Google Glass.
“We’re eager to see both services and hardware for Glass that define new paradigms for how technology fits into people’s lives. In particular, we’re excited about consumer and enterprise innovations that impact areas that millions of people rely upon everyday.”
Speaking about why he co-founded the group, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz believes that Google Glass will have a greater impact on the world than smartphones and tablets are currently having;
“The thesis of Glass is profoundly transformational. And as with the Internet and smartphones, a huge amount of work will be done by third-party developers to fully realize the Glass vision. Glass brings developers a new springboard for creativity and an amazing new platform to build the defining applications of the future”
