Adobe announced yesterday at their Max conference that they will be funding startups that leverage Adobe technologies (particularly Apollo) to the tune of $100 million.
What's Apollo? It's a new, cross-platform runtime technology that takes Flash and HTML (as well as other common browser scripting languages) out of the browser.
Investing in targeted startups is a great idea--particularly while inexpensive investments are still "acceptable." With this fund, Adobe should be able to spread their money quite effectively. Even at $250K per company per year their investment strategy could have significant impact. Heck, $50K can make a huge difference for a one or two person team early on too. What Adobe has to resist though is the urge to place large bets on a small number of companies. This may make it easier to manage the investment portfolio, but it's unlikely to have the impact they want.
I think this is a good move on Adobe's part. Most traditional VCs aren't going to be interested in encouraging Adobe's cross-platform technology per-se, but an Adobe fund can. Adobe is interested not only in the success of the startup they invest in, but also the adoption rate of their technology--by developers and end-users. This is not the case with a typical VC. A VC doesn't necessarily care if a product is implemented using Java or the .NET platform or now Apollo. They want the company to pick what makes sense. Now Adobe wants the same thing--however, if you pick Apollo, then they'll be interested, potentially financially.


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