I gave two talks at the recent Devcon5 Conference in New York City on "Venture Capital in a Mobile Virtual World" and "Seeding the Start-ups"(http://html5.tmcnet.com/conference/newyork/Agenda/Agenda-at-a-glance.aspx) Some of the highlights from my talk were: 1) Mobile is a distinct wave (personal, ubiquitous, payments, point-of-decision, behavior measurement, social context, and augmented reality to name a few); 2) Despite the fact that wireless VC investment is rising to $1B+ in 2011, in is still a shadow of the $4B spent in 2000 and pales compared to the $8B spent in Cleantech; 3) Of the 114 wireless deals done this year so far, 65 are early stage/series A and the largest deals included $100M in Square and $50M in Foursquare; 4) New York is quietly becoming a major investment hub for wireless on the back of its strong media/advertising corridor. New York + Boston now equals the total VC wireless/tech investment in Silicon Valley in 2011; 5) Hot areas for investment include network traffic shaping/offload, video optimization, social media integration, apps/middleware, mobile analytics; 6) HTML5 is lowering the barrier to entry for mobile apps (less dependency on 3rd party software) and new apps store models like Facebook and Amazon; 7) the wireless wave is causing significant "creative destruction" and is presenting new opportunities at the boundaries/intersections of traditional industries (example - Kindle); 8) Large players will need to adopt a co-innovation approach in order to attract the participation of smaller companies with creative, innovative solutions; 9) Several carriers such as AT&T and Verizon have created co-innovation testbeds to make their networks/resources accessible to entrepreneurs/developers; 10) seed funding is available for good ideas and investors are willing to move fast (our own new venture, Mobiquity, was able to close on funding in less than 3 months from the initial plan)
The frenzy around mobile investment is building, but this time, the economics (cheap smartphones/tablets) and market reach (10B devices) are there to support the returns to make this more than another bubble.
The frenzy around mobile investment is building, but this time, the economics (cheap smartphones/tablets) and market reach (10B devices) are there to support the returns to make this more than another bubble.