VC Firm Bay Partners Establishes Fund For Facebook Developers

Whether you question the viability of Facebook “apps” for the long run (I am) or really are completely gung-ho from concept to end product (I’m not), it doesn’t change the fact that some in The Valley are feeling quite bullish when it comes to stuff built with APIs proffered by Zuckerberg & Co.

By some, I mean the folks at the very public venture capital firm Bay Partners. As it turns out, they’ve gone ahead and established an annex fund dubbed AppFactory, created solely to provide third-party Facebook developers with, you know, money.

The plan behind AppFactory is fairly straightforward. Bay Partners has stated it’s reserved $300 million of “cash and commitments” to be doled out to “promising Facebook developers” in allotments as small as $25,000. The five-figure infusions signify that Bay views AppFactory as a sort of beta to see just how far those with APIs in their hands can go within the limits of the Facebook environment. The numbers are also relatively minor enough that the Bay likely won’t scrutinize “candidates” as closely as it does its larger, “more traditional” investments. A Bay partner, Salil Deshpande, speaking to a CNET correspondent about the fund’s proposed filtration measures, said, “We’ll rely on instinct.” That sums it up nicely, eh?

AppFactory hasn’t been designed solely to provide cash to those who need it. Bay has stated that the new fund would grant developers “easy access to people it’s connected with at supporting companies like Amazon, whose Amazon Web Services server farm can be employed to run Facebook apps.”

While AppFactory may be short lived – the breadth of the collection of Facebook apps in existence today will likely shrink significantly in the seasons to come, giving little reason for a venture fund built in order to expand the number of apps available to the network’s members – the fact that Bay intends to maintain relatively small investments in each development shows that the VCs behind the annex will not be risking an exorbitant amount of money, so no matter how this whole thing turns out, Bay will not find itself in the red.

So fund away, Bay. Just don’t loosen the purse strings too much, alrighty? There’ll be plenty of viable ventures popping up in the future that have naught to do with Facebook that’ll be needing some of your green to succeed. Clearly, there are many zeroes divided by many commas being thrown about the tech space today, and it’s just good sense not to get ahead of yourselves while cocooned in Bubble 2.0. It’s a no-brainer to double-check the forecast once in a while is all I’m saying.

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