Eniac Ventures, a seed stage investment firm focused solely on mobile startups, launched Friday a $1.6 million fund.
Named after ENIAC, the first electronic computer, Eniac Ventures firmly believes mobile to be the next dominant computing platform, naturally evolving out of the personal and Internet computing that has ruled since the 1980s. Obviously, Eniac is far from the only one to think so. In fact, the site prominently gives credit to Google CEO Eric Schmidt for declaring, “The biggest growth areas are clearly within the mobile space.”
The New York-based fund was founded by four mobile-minded entrepreneurs and investors: Hadley Harris, Vice President of Consumer Business at Vlingo; Nihal Mehta, CEO and co-founder of buzzd; Vic Singh, co-founder of NearVerse; and Tim Young, founder of the Arch Rock Foundation.
Mehta might be the biggest name among the four, as he was an early investor in AdMob, the mobile ad marketplace that Google snatched up last year for $750 million.
Eniac investments, which will range in size from $25,000 to $100,000, should reach between 30 and 50 startups over the next few years. Half of the $1.6 million fund will be reserved for follow-up rounds.
“We want to be able to double-down on Series A rounds on companies that we think are worth it,” says Mehta.
Eniac-funded startups will be happy to hear that the four founders will also provide their best business development advice and help them make connections with relevant partners.
Eniac Ventures has already injected seed investments in six startups, including Localytics (real-time analytics for mobile apps), MightyMeeting (PowerPoint presentation mobile sharing), NearVerse (proximity-based social network), and Philo (social network for TV).
