fbFund

Accelerate. Revise. Iterate. Revolutionize.

These words describe the spirit behind fbFund REV 2009, our new startup incubator program for social websites, applications, and platforms. Eighteen startups, two non-profits, top Facebook Developers, veteran entrepreneurs, and angel investors will take part in an intense and exciting ten-week journey this summer under one roof at one of our Facebook offices in Palo Alto, California.

Connect (website / iPhone)

DamntheRadio: #1 way fans hear about concerts: word of mouth. #1 reason why they don’t go: didn’t hear about it. Discover & share live music through the social graph by turning your friends’ concert calendars into a playlist. DAMNTHERADIO! Stream who’s playing tonight!

DropPlay: DropPlay works like iTunes, but it's online and free. See what your friends are listening to right now and share music like never before! Started by 4 Stanford grads, DropPlay's goal is to revolutionize music listening.

Frintro: Find friends-of-friends to date...or play matchmaker! If you're single, you can search friends' friends and ask for intros. If you're taken, you can set friends up. Friends-of-friends are the best people to date. It’s social dating via friendly intros.

Govit: Play politics for real, and have your voice heard on the Economy, Environment, HealthCare, and more. Vote on the issues and send your votes directly to your Elected Representatives. Work with citizens and politicians to create the change you want.

GreetBeatz: GreetBeatz enables a totally new type of virtual gift, one that has actual value. With GreetBeatz, you can commission a talented independent artist to write and produce a highly personal, original song for a friend.

Jooners: Activity organizers create sign-up sheets with tasks, time slots, needed items & requests for money. Participants select and pay online! Auto-reminders & thank-you notes keep the group informed & happy. Easy to be an organizer. Easy to be a participant.

Life360: From keeping track of your kids, to protecting your identity and getting back your lost stuff, Life360 is the place you go to keep your family safe, secure, and prepared for daily life.

Lunchster: Lunchster automatically schedules lunches with nearby friends and colleagues. And a seamless integration with Outlook, iCal, and Google Calendar means that you only need to accept or decline. Sign up now and connect with friends in the real-world.

MyChurch.org: Churches create their own social networks on MyChurch.org. They extend their community between Sundays with tools to connect and engage their members. Over 30,000 church congregations are represented on MyChurch.org.

Navify / Share Photos (PictureSurf.org): Navify is a visual encyclopedia that combines Wikipedia articles with images, videos, and comments. It is the only general encyclopedia that allows you to listen to music videos, watch movie trailers, and browse news and celebrity photo galleries.

Nutshell Mail: Simplify the way you manage Facebook and other social networks. NutshellMail consolidates activity from all your accounts into a single email digest delivered on your schedule. Don’t let email alerts clutter your inbox. Get informed, not interrupted. Get the Nut!

Offeretti: Offeretti is a search engine for offers, coupons and deals from local businesses. Users can explore, discover and share offers with Facebook friends. Offeretti finds the right offers through location aware search and also allows users to comment on offers.

Prohibition Homebrew: Prohibition Homebrew is an online, community-based web application and ecommerce engine centered around home beermaking.

RentMineOnline: Combines the success of resident referral programs with the power of social networks. Residents refer their community to friends through Facebook to earn rewards and live with friends.

RUNmyERRAND: RUNmyERRAND is a social networking inspired web and mobile marketplace that provides people and businesses an easy and trusted way to get everyday tasks done in their own hyperlocal community.

RunThere: RunThere is a social-networking service for runners and cyclists. Users can map and measure their favorite routes (no GPS required), keep a running/biking log, and find athletes and routes nearby.

SocialFeet: SocialFeet enables any website to easily implement “Activity Stream Publishing”. With the SocialFeet widget, a website can increase traffic by empowering its visitors to stream their activities to Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.

ThredUp: ThredUp is the easy and inexpensive way to refresh your closet by exchanging great clothes you don’t wear anymore for great new clothes you will. With an easy-to-use interface (no bartering, no auctions, no hassle) and Netflix style peer-to-peer delivery, ThredUp is the first recycle-bin + personal shopper combination, ever. It’s truly a closet revolution!

Weardrobe: Weardrobe is a fashion-focused community for discovering different ways to wear clothing. Weardrobe provides a platform for people to share reviews of their own clothing, post photos of their looks, catalog their closet and search for style inspiration.

Workstir: Workstir is a community that connects users with trustworthy local service providers. Anyone can post a job and choose a provider with confidence by browsing their past reviews. For businesses, Workstir provides a wealth of jobs in their area of expertise.

Worldly Developments: Worldly Developments is building online services that will help you connect with the people, places and events in your local community. Its first product makes it a snap to plan, promote, and communicate around group activities.

Non-Profits

Samasource: Sama is Sanskrit for “equal” – Samasource finds and trains reliable QA professionals to test Facebook apps with a user-friendly interface that lives on the Platform. With Samasource, developers lower costs, reduce poverty, and improve their applications.

Vittana: Vittana enables you to lend directly to students in the developing world, $25 at a time. Their mission is to bring student loans to the developing world through the power of person-to-person microlending.

iPhone:

CrazyMenu: Maximizes lunch time by making Facebook or twitter the preferred tool for quick eat-outs or suggestion gathering via iPhone. Call to order from 30,000 menus on the go. No fees or commissions to order, or for restaurants to add menus or coupons.

FriendFreak: Think you know your friends? It's not what you know, it's who you know and how well you know them. FriendFreak is an App for your iPhone that improves your knowledge of your social network. FriendFreak was designed by Think Top Down in San Francisco.

Funji: Funji is an avatar based social networking app for the iPhone & iPod touch satisfying users' desire to express themselves and communicate with others in a fun, creative way. The team has over 5 years of experiences in mobile market in South Korea and US.

gottaDo: gottaDo is a social task manager and organizer for the business person who’s often on the move. Organize tasks for yourself and friends on Facebook and sync everything seamlessly to your iPhone for travel. Istpika is a social network application developer.

iPickUp: iPickUp – set up your pickup status, pickup line, favorite bar & drink on your iPhone or Facebook and start flirting with new people on location. You can send a private message, a virtual gift or even go on an instant date at a nearby location.

Paparazzi: Paparazzi turns you and your friends into celebrities. Snap shots with your iPhone, tag friends, add snarky headlines and share on Facebook. Build a friend's fame by taking more photos of them, and score big for catching your hottest friends in hot places.

Sortuv: Sortuv lets you start with something you like, & discover more. Instead of searching for a “great restaurant” just say what you mean: “Find me a place sortuv like Spago in Seattle”. Online at http://sortuv.com & iPhone at http://bit.ly/nearnow

Toonsy Net: Toonsy Net allows music producers to upload their tracks and to promote through Facebook. Individuals can upload entire libraries and discuss and listen on Facebook. An iPhone app (in beta) lets people listen and comment from anywhere.

TourSpot: TourSpot enhances the experience of travel by combining social networking features with a map-based travel and city guide. The content is written by travel writers and features events, restaurants, bars, hotels, shops, and mobile coupons in New York City.

Platform:

Auto Mania: cy-Designer is a Canadian social media company fuelled by its communities. Auto Mania, App Broker and App Bookmark highlight the strategic focus to provide entertainment, utility to its user group and unique value proposition to global enterprises.

Bitstrips: Bitstrips is the world’s best online comic strip builder and the world's biggest comic strip making community. It mixes user-generated content with social networking to let everyone communicate, create and collaborate - as cartoons!

FAME: FAME (Famous Market Exchange), is the NASDAQ of Social Networks. FAME is Facebook’s first virtual Stock Exchange of People & Predictions on a simulated stock market platform. Own shares of your friends, or discover your own stock price and popularity!

Gameyola: Gameyola is a distribution and monetization platform for casual Flash games. Flash games currently monetize poorly, but Gameyola solves this problem by providing Flash developers tools to sell virtual goods and to acquire users through social channels.

Grabbler: iPlaysocial brings you Grabbler, a turn-based, multiplayer word game that combines strategy and word skills like never before. The game play is simple and involves making turn-based, interlocking words on a 12x12 grid of cubes with letters on all sides.

GreenBook: Greenbook educates Facebook users on climate change and issues that threaten our fragile planet. The application enables users to find ideas and products to make their life greener, learn about their carbon footprint and even reduce it by using Greenbook.

iChallenge: iChallenge motivates FB members to get fit and socialize with friends. Players receive points for Activities (ie, running) and for eating Super-foods (ie, kale). Players create private challenges between friends or join public challenges worldwide.

Networked Blogs: Bring your blog to Facebook, and Facebook to your blog. Pull your feed to your profile and business pages, add widgets to promote your network, and read the news from blogs you follow on the largest community of bloggers and blog lovers on Facebook.

Paradise Paintball 3D: Paradise Paintball is the first game developed on Cmune's next-generation social gaming platform. It is the first casual 3D multiplayer FPS game on Facebook, Apple Dashboard and Mac & PC. Play with up to 8 friends & virtual items to enhance the gameplay.

Photos I Like: PhotosILike is a digital media sharing and discovery site emphasizing lightweight social content, self-expression, and communities.

RoomBug: RoomBug teams up with universities and off-campus communities, allowing students to select future roommates rather than being randomly assigned together. Users can search for roommates by common interest, send messages and refer to lifestyle preferences.

shoutvelocity: A place to 'shout', ask, vote and compete. Every shout is heard, voted upon and gets a score. For every shout, one is required to compare a pair of other shouts. This automatically produces scores and ensures all shouts are heard. Also a useful platform to conduct polls.

TravelBrain / GeckoGo: Travel Brain by GeckoGo helps you track (and show off!) your travels, share experiences with others, and discover new places to visit. Learn from the knowledge of over 600,000 travelers, and get expert guide info from their Bradt Travel Guides partnership.

Traxo: An exciting new social-travel service that automatically detects when you’ve booked a trip, proactively identifies any travel overlaps, and securely shares your past and future travel plans with the friends you trust, directly on the Facebook Stream.

Twangü: Twangü is a group buying application that allows you to get volume discounts on the stuff you want to buy. Build your shopping team and watch thousands of vendors bid on your team's business. The bigger the shopping team, the bigger the savings!

Veechi Classes: Veechi is a professional platform on Facebook that lets employers identify, target, and qualify “best fit” college students for employment recruiting. Students use tools to discover and review courses, and to present themselves to employers.

Word Hunt 2009: Word Hunt is a word puzzle where players compete to create as many words as possible from letter tiles scattered across Facebook.

Ultimate SnoRiders Directory: The Ultimate SnoRiders Directory is a travel guide connecting riders. The goal is to help you maximize your opportunity and enjoyment by creating a rider based community that gives you an intimate knowledge of mountains around the world from your hometown.

Guest post by Founders Fund startup investor and geek blogger Dave McClure, who will be running the fbFund 2009 Incubator Program.

Alright folks, the votes are in! The Academy... er, i mean the fbFund team has spent the last month reviewing ~400 submissions for the fbFund 2009 Incubator program. Now we're ready to announce the first 25 of our 50 finalists (& we'll announce the second group of 25 soon, as well as our eventual Incubator winners and fbFund investments).

Different from previous fbFund funding cycles, this time around we invited more than 20 of our Developer Council advisors and investors to help us review, rate, interview, & select the finalists. We spent many a late night in April & May toiling over hot laptops, reading executive summaries, reviewing powerpoint presentations, watching video pitches (both good and bad -- some of you should NOT be on YouTube), and even calling a few of the most amazing companies & developers to make sure they weren't droids in disguise. At the end, we had a tough time figuring out which teams building Facebook apps, Facebook Connect websites, and iPhone apps would make the cut and which would not. However when in doubt, we simply consulted the Mighty Magic 8-Ball for insight & inspiration (NOT!).

So with no further ado, we'd like to announce our first 25 fbFund 2009 Finalists:

• Connect sites: Frintro, GovIt, RunMyErrand, RentMineOnline, MyChurch.org, GreetBeatz, Workstir, NutshellMail, RunThere, DropPlay, Magellan (private beta), Life360 (private beta), Vittana (private beta)


• Platform apps: Travel Brain, Networked Blogs, Gameyola, Photos I Like, Paradise Paintball 3D, Veechi Classes, BitStrips (private beta), SamaSource


• iPhone apps: FriendFreak, Near+Now (Sortuv), Paparazzi, CrazyMenu


Select finalist descriptions:




• Frintro: Play matchmaker to help your single friends find friends of friends to date! Think social dating via "friendly introductions."


• RentMineOnline: Combines the success of resident referral programs with the power of social networks. Residents refer their community to friends through Facebook to earn rewards and live with friends.


• Travel Brain & GeckoGo.com: Play the Travel Brain app on Facebook to choose your favorite travel spots; then search travel reviews on GeckoGo.com


• FriendFreak: Play a fun and social iPhone app to learn more about all your Facebook friends




Congratulations to all of the first 25 finalists, and much thanks to everyone who applied to the program.

Next up we'll be announcing our second group of 25 finalists, and then from among the 50 finalists we'll reveal the winning Incubator apps and startups. The winners will be offered the opportunity to participate in our summer Incubator program, and we'll also be providing seed investments of up to $100,000 (note: no longer grants). Our 10-week program will begin in mid-June and go thru end of August in Silicon Valley, and will be housed at one of the former Facebook offices in downtown Palo Alto. Throughout the summer, we'll be inviting mentors and advisors from Facebook and over 20 top development companies and startup investors to help our Incubator startups grow up from Paduans to Jedis.

And remember young Jedi... there is no try, only DO!