Mobile investing: Angels and big VC firms converge on capital-efficient deals

As mobile applications and startups become less pricey to fund, big investment firms are overlapping more and more with Silicon Valley angel investors as their funds and deal sizes shrink.

Todays Smart Strategies for Mobile Investing session at MobileBeat2010 reflected this new convergence, fielding two distinguished angels, Jeff Clavier of SoftTechVC, and Aydin Senkut of Felicis Ventures, as well as a representative from one of the best know tech venture capital firms in the world, Matt Murphy from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers iFund.

KPCB's creation of the $200 million iFund, in general, is indicative of bigger funds adapting to shifting industry landscapes. The goal of the initiative is to fund more experimental products built for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad, like social networking, mobile commerce and health care applications.

Whats happened over the last year is that venture capitalists are going down-market while angels are moving upmarket, and they are starting to overlap, Murphy said. Weve been more active to invest alongside these guys, to accept whatever risk and say, lets see what happens.

Clavier, who has invested in mobile plays like Seesmic and Mob.ly, agrees that this is where investing in the space has been heading, which has created more opportunities for collaboration than competition so far.

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