Notes from the IBF Venture Conference - Part Deux

For those of you interested in global VC investment trends:

It's official: with the VCs these days, the consumer is king.



According to Morgan Stanley, 2008 looks like the year, after trailing by a significant margin, that consumer global IP traffic gains parity with business traffic and by 2011 consumer traffic will be three times that of business traffic.



VC investing is following (rather, enabling) the trend. For investments in 2007:



Internet / Consumer media is up over 90%

Both IT Services and Application Software off about 10%

Enterprise Networking Equipment investment is off 60%



In the Software Application space



Web based software (SaaS) is up over 90%

Mobile Consumer Apps up 80%

and Web 2.0 and social media applications are up 60%



In communications and wireless



Video on the Network is up 50%

while VOIP, RFID, WiFi and Optical Networking are all off 25-35%



To those of you trying to figure out what business to start next, the most venture money is going in to:

• Rich Media (video)


• Web 2.0 (assuming that means social-media enabled stuff)


• Cleantech


• Gaming: both mobile and on-line


• Mobile applications (see my previous post re: iPhone)


• Software as a Service


• Global Outsourcing


• and next generation network services (we'll always need bandwidth).

Random additional notes:



VC cleantech investments, according to our friends at E&Y are up globally 25% CAGR since 2001, up 21% CAGR in the US, Europe and Israel and up 195% CAGR in China (from almost nothing in 2001).



Since their respective peaks in 2000, the Dow is up 11% (13,063 vs. 11,723) but the tech-heavy NASDAQ is down 50% (2,525 vs. 5,049) as of Q2 2007.