Want to know which Venture Capital firms are putting money into the cloud? Cloud application service provider startups abound, and money for them will only be flowing until 2010. At least, that's what James Staten of Forrester says. After that, James doesn't think that any VC firm would give you a second glance if the word "cloud" is in your business proposal or in your name.
Why? Because we're in the "trough of disillusionment", according to the cloud Hype Cycle. The cloud bubble will be bursting around 2010. Losers in this space will disappear as we reach the "slope of enlightenment", and then those who are doing interesting things will continue on and experience real productivity and profitability.
Enough about that. You need to know where to get money for your startup. Here's my list of VCs, angel investors, and companies in this space who have provided funding recently.
- Allen & Co. (Ning)
- Amazon (Elastra, Engine Yard)
- Bay Partners (Elastra)
- Benchmark Capital (FriendFeed, Mint, Yelp, RightScale, Engine Yard)
- Bezos Expeditions (Skytap)
- Bob Pittman (Zynga)
- DAG Ventures (Yelp)
- First Round Capital (Mint, MyYearbook)
- Greylock and Omidyar (Digg)
- Hummer Windblad Venture Partners (Elastra)
- Ignition Partners (Skytap)
- Kleiner Perkins (Zynga)
- Legg Mason (Ning)
- Madrona Venture Group (Skytap)
- Mission Ventures (Nirvanix)
- New Enterprise Associates (Engine Yard)
- Northwest Venture Partners (MyYearbook)
- Sequoia (Appirio)
- Shasta Ventures (Mint)
- Ticketmaster (iLike)
- US Venture Partners (MyYearbook)
- Valhalla (Nirvanix)
- Washington Research Foundation Capital (Skytap)
- Windward Ventures (Nirvanix)
For those of you who want to jumpstart your startup, check out Sun's Startup Essentials.
