8:55 am ET
May 6, 2015
Deborah Gage
MkII Ventures Focusing on Layer, Raising Fund to Back Layer Apps
By
Deborah Gage
MkII Ventures, a micro-VC firm founded by San Francisco investor Ron Palmeri, has decided to focus on a single portfolio company, Layer Inc., and is raising a fund through AngelList to invest in Layer apps.
Ron Palmeri
Mr. Palmeri has become chief executive of Layer, which lets developers add messaging functions to any app, and the Layer Fund so far has $500,000 committed by Bloomberg Beta along with undisclosed commitments from several other investors.
“It’s like what Amazon did with CPUs and disks and (Amazon Web Services)–you can deliver communications or messaging as a service,” Mr. Palmeri said. “Messaging is becoming the predominant interaction model, and it’s a pretty safe commentary on how apps are going.”
Mr. Palmeri launched MkII Ventures toward the end of 2010 after he helped dismantle his previous firm, Minor Ventures, which was forced to shut down after its founder and limited partner, Halsey Minor, became financially over-extended.
Mr. Palmeri bankrolled MkII Ventures himself at first and then raised an evergreen fund of about $10 million from investors including Pacific Partners, SV Angel and Michael Arrington’s Crunchfund.
The plan was to create one or two technology companies a year, working with a team and a concept, and imagining products, he told Dow Jones VentureWire in 2013, but Layer has enough promise that MkII Ventures is now focused solely on building the one company, he said.
Layer raised a $14.5 million Series A round last year and has a partnership with the photo storage and sharing site Photobucket.com Inc. But the company’s messaging infrastructure could be used by any app developer, Mr. Palmeri said, and Layer envisions developers “who want to control their own destiny” creating their own messaging networks, which can include chat, voice and video.
The Layer Fund is a way to give small teams of developers access to capital, perhaps $50,000 or $100,000, “at a key point in the company’s growth,” Mr. Palmeri said.
MkII Ventures Partner Allison Messner, who also heads communications at Layer, will be managing the Layer Fund and helping Layer developer teams with communication and marketing, she said. Developers are invited to apply for funding, and those who are selected can participate in demo day that is scheduled for June 24.
Bloomberg Beta head Roy Bahat, whose firm has invested in MkII Ventures, the Layer Fund and Layer, said Bloomberg backs the strategy.
Founder-led studios like MkII Ventures may have a plan to create multiple things, he said, “but if one ends up as a potential unicorn, you lean into that thing. Part of the game is knowing when to abandon the playbook and pursue the opportunity to be unique. That’s what all startups are about.”
Other investors in the Layer Fund include Anthem Venture Partners, Data Collective, Crunchfund, Promus Ventures, SV Angel and entrepreneur Jean Pigozzi.
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