Recent Venture Capital Investing Trends

Goldman Sachs recently came out with a report analyzing recent venture capital investing trends. Key takeaways from the report include:

Strong current investment interest in:

• Software as a Service business models focusing on consumers and small and medium business, aka the Salesforce.com, 37 Signals, and SuccessFactors models.
• Next generation mobile - including mobile GPS/navigation, television, and advertising.
• Video-related investments, ranging from web video tools to enterprise video conferencing.
• An increase in global (specifically India & China) focused investments

Concurrently, previous hot sectors of enterprise software, storage, and security software have and forecasted to see a cooling of interest.

It is important to note that the VC investment marketplace tends to move in waves - large crests of interests in certain investment spaces that as quickly crash and fall out of favor. Above all else, it is NOT advisable to start or re-focus a business based solely on "hot" investment interest in that sector. A chameleon business strategy of this nature is usually transparent, and almost always unsuccesful.

Good posts on the Goldman report can be seen here and here.