After the panel on "Business Models and Investment Opportunities" at the Mobile Future conference, I caught up with Kleiner Perkin's partner, Matt Murphy (pictured), the point person for the $100 million iFund for iPhone Application Developers.

In the 5 weeks after the creation of the iFund, Murphy received more than 1,500 business plans and proposals from around the world but is actively "engaged" in about 70.

Unlike the past Java Fund that received investments from KPCB along with Sun Microsystems and IBM, the iFund has been entirely funded by the VC firm. Apple being a strategic ally that will help the iFund companies accelerate their growth with marketing and sales initiatives. However, what stroke me was that the first companies to be iFunded (Pelago and iControl) simply "adapted" their existing product/application to the iPhone instead of creating something from scratch for Apple's phone.

"Out of the 70 or so companies we are engaged with, over 95% are domestic... The international proposals are the most raw, like a few people and an idea out of Hungary for example. But the projects from outside the U.S. need to be more mature projects before we can invest. Domestically it's different. We'll do early stage, incubation, series A, etc... About 85% of the proposals are consumer applications (location-based services, social networking, communication...) and the rest is enterprise", said Murphy.