The $100 Million Mobile App Question

Is there a Microsoft of the mobile application world?

“The mobile and wireless world is exploding,” said Chip Hazard, a general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm. Apple just soared past a billion downloads, handsets are becoming more powerful and cellular networks and bandwidth is steadily improving, he said.

But from a venture capitalist’s perspective, Mr. Hazard wondered, is there a $100 million mobile application company out there or just lots of hobbyists?

That was the question Mr. Hazard posed to a panel of mobile industry veterans during Wednesday’s closing panel at the National Venture Capitalist Association annual meeting in Boston.

“I am bullish about the future for mobile for generating revenue,” said Bernard Gershon, a senior vice president with the Walt Disney Company, highlighting the popularity of Apple’s App store.

“I don’t know if iBeer will be making tons of money,” Mr. Gershon said. “But Pandora has a fantastic app experience. There’s potentially something in that space that could be interesting. Gaming is becoming more interesting too.”

Rich Miner, one of the managing directors of Google Ventures, the recently formed venture capital arm of the company, said the issue was still a murky one.

They’ll make the guy in the garage happy and some angels very happy, he said. But venture capitalists want to be able to sell the company to another company or to the public in an initial public offering to get a return on their investment. “I’m not sure those venture style exits exist,” he said.

Mr. Miner helped develop Android, Google’s mobile platform, before he stepped into his role at Google Ventures. He said having reliable platforms where developers could release their software and see if it had a viable audience was crucial. There’s no guarantee any application will be a runaway success.