500 Startups Launches 500 Mobile Collective, A $10 Mn Mobile Focused Micro Fund

Silicon Valley based Startup Accelerator 500 Startups has announced launch of 500 Mobile Collective (aka “500 MC”), a $10 Mn micro-fund focused on mobile. The fund will be investing in awesome mobile founders, apps, and startups all over the world.

The fund is focused on seed and early stage startups — aiming to fund founders with strong mobile domain expertise, engineering excellence and the conviction in the use of mobile technology to change how the world works.

This new fund will be managed by new 500 investing partner Edith Yeung, who is a former Dolphin Browser VP of International Business Development and former Director of Corporate Strategy.

“The 500 MC Collective will use their various superpowers and dark arts to help startup founders with access to mobile OEMs and carriers and help them with advice on mobile-focused distribution, monetization, commerce and payments,” said 500 Startups.

 The partners & early 500 MC advisors include:

• Greg Kidd – Early investor of Twitter and Square
• Jay Sullivan – Former COO and Interim CEO of Mozilla
• Yongzhi Yang – Founder and CEO of Dolphin Browser
• Joe Wu – Cofounder/CEO of 91 (acquired by Baidu for $1.9B) and mFund

Starting today, 500 Mobile Collective will be looking for founders with startups in following domains:

• Mobile payment  
• Mobile content
• Mobile commerce 
• Mobile healthcare
• Mobile security  
• Mobile ad network & monetization  
• Mobile gaming
• Mobile developers tool
• Mobile enterprise

In context of India, SE Asia, Middle East and Africa, Edith Yeung, said, “Have HUGE mobile growth and potential, but very tough in generating $, relative low ARPU and complicated to operate across so many different languages. I would love to see more mobile commerce that generates micro transactions happening there. I also think that entrepreneurs in these countries can probably learn a lot more from China than America. Remember – China was a very low ARPU country a couple years ago and its no longer the case right now. Thank God we have Khailee to hold down the fort.”

Recently, 500 Startups has announced its Batch 11.

Related: Learning Curve. 30 Days Of Acceleration

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