Starting with $1M, Skyseed Already Vetting its First Submissions
AUSTIN, Texas , Dec. 12, 2024 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Open Source veteran entrepreneur Peter Wang today launches Skyseed Fund, the world's first venture fund and incubator focused exclusively on Bluesky and its open ecosystem.
"Bluesky has clearly crossed over from serving mostly technical early-adopters into mainstream appeal," said Wang. "While much has been written recently about Bluesky's stunning growth, its real power lies in the open protocol (AT Protocol) that the team has pioneered. The Skyseed Fund will accelerate and incubate innovation in that open ecosystem."
For most of its 25 Million users, the experience of Bluesky is through its Bluesky App, which appears similar to Twitter (now renamed X), but there is a significant difference designed from the ground up to ensure a different, safer path for the company: the underlying tech and social graph are all open source. This gives everyone the freedom to build new, socially-infused applications.
"In the last month, I have seen people quickly build new kinds of social apps for music, book reviews, photo sharing, maps, and much more, all leveraging Bluesky's open social graph," said Wang. "They demonstrate that we may finally be able to break out of today's walled gardens, whose predatory business models exploit users via dopamine addiction. Bluesky and the AT Protocol can provide the substrate for an Internet that promotes healthy online connections, as opposed to rewarding the most polarizing and rage-baiting behavior."
With over $1M of initial committed capital, Skyseed has already begun the process of vetting proposals for both products and developer grants. "I didn't even have a website yet and people were DMing me with prototypes and demos they'd been working on," said Wang. "This kind of enthusiasm reminds me of the Internet in 1996!"
Skyseed offers traditional venture-style pre-seed terms but will also fund projects that can graduate into more sustainable for-profit or cooperative business models. Additionally, Skyseed has reserved a portion of capital for pure development grants. This is the first tranche of funding, and the goal is growth.
The Fund will initially focus on improving the AT Protocol ecosystem in areas such as data privacy and local-first experiences; user-centric design for parents, children, and small communities; and data protocols for respecting user intent and data rights with regards to AI and social media.
Developers looking to submit ideas for consideration can contact @skyseed.fund on Bluesky.
About Peter Wang
Peter Wang is the co-founder and Chief AI Officer of Anaconda, the world's most popular Python distribution, and is the creator of the PyData community. Although most of his career focused on Python data science, machine learning, and AI, he has been involved in the decentralized web movement for nearly a decade, and has been an outspoken advocate for humane computing and online communications technologies.
Media Contact
Jack Rowe, Skyseed, 7072362177, [email protected]
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