Published on December 31, 2015
Every year it seems as though VC investments or the startups opting for Venture Capital are dominated by one major trend. These trends are horizontal tech trends that influence basically all verticals and hence have an impact on everyone using some kind of technology. I always try to define a couple of these trends for the next year to get a clear picture of what could be coming at us VC’s in the next year. However, although my analytical rational brain can drill down microscopically to why the next year certain trends should happen, I tend to be wrong every time. That certainly doesn’t keep me from doing the thinking – it keeps me sharp as a razorblade!
Sharing
When we look back in time 2011 was certainly dominated by anything that had to do with sharing and renting. The fundamentals of the sharing economy were laid down. We saw companies like Airbnb and Uber getting their initial traction, resulting in a flow of new startups that tried to apply similar models to other verticals.
Cloud
2012 was the year of cloud computing. All of a sudden meetings on Monday morning were dominated by SaaS, Cloud and virtual whatever. The bla bla bla -as-a-Service acronym was born and present in basically every pitch deck. Interesting about this time was how people tended to try and explain that everything about computing all of a sudden changed. In essence nothing really fundamentally changed. As new software application and startups are still used to solve problems similar to 10 years ago.
Social
In 2013 social everything was the thing companies needed to pay attention to. VCs literally received tons of business plans, which had social sharing, advertising, monitoring, analyzing, and many more trending buzz words in them. Many startups had a ride on this wave, but unfortunately are not with us anymore due to the dazzling speed of this trend.
Fintech
And then, all of a sudden in 2014, the world was enlightened with a trend that came in like a tornado. The other trends had a lot of impact and certainly left their mark, but non have the immense economic impact like the fintech trend. This multi-gazillion business effects everyone and has made the largest of corporations become aware of what startups are capable of.
Internet of Things
This year was really the year of making everything connected. The internet of things was the name now used for anything startups were doing online and offline too. Interesting about this trend is that it has such impact on our daily behavior that we’ve probably only seen the tip of the iceberg just yet. We’ll see what will happen with all the startups in the next years!
2016?
And for 2016? I’ve listed ‘only mobile’, ‘identity’ and ‘something with privacy’. We’ll see what happens. I do not have the answer, but would love to hear your thoughts.
I wish you a Happy New Year!
