Heavy funding has propelled growth in the collaborative economy, and key trends have begun to emerge among investors in the growing space.
A study of 200 startups indicated that 37% had been funded, raising an average of $29m—a high amount for such an early market that will certainly attract additional funding as it heats up. San Francisco and Silicon Valley-based firms funded the most frequency of these startups, with angel investors the highest frequency investors. Individual investors also include Hollywood stars and internet veterans.
These patterns help to outline the market maturity of the collaborative economy, and startups should use them to identify which investors are best fits for their investment strategy and expansion needs.
Read the full story on Jeremiah Owyang’s blog.
That is one big problem faced by every enrnpereteur venturing from india . proximity to valley and deal maker is a must for the success of any venture . success for an Internet start up means being bought or acquired by the big 5 of internet world and to do that you need to be in the valley .i have been told by my friends repeatedly that you might have the best product in world but to close the deal you need to be seen in the valley circuit . A friend of mine who used to live in Silicon Valley during dotcom days and worked for hotmail (yes he made a lot of money from stock ) told me that apart from the engg genius what gave edge to hotmail . another reason was the fact that sabeer bahtia was excellent in networking , he was regular at the cocktail and barbecue parties of valley . it helps if somebody is seen around and among one of them . all this talks of connected world,level playing field and geographically neutral market is not that true.Talking of recognizing opportunity i agree with you that some emerging markets are more suitable for some specific venture . may fave Example is of . Mobile web Application . in this space being in India might work as an advantage in terms of proximity to consumer. but again if your dream is to sell your venture to google and yahoo of world you better have a front end in US. i think one company which is doing it right is Riya , they have there top Management in US and Dev back end in Bangalore . so they have both cost advantage and with good chance of being acquired also . Same is also true for Funding .one interesting aspect here is what these big guys want to buy (tech, idea , revneu or User base ) . i think its the user base . if you have sufficient user base . you will surely catch there attention . Given low PC and Broadband penetration in Indian subcontinent one way out is start from India but focus on Asia , we are sufficiently close to our customer and understand them if we look at the folks in India,China,Japan and Singapore and do something specific to there need it will be tapping a big user base . (which can defect to Google if they choose to copy your idea and give it for free)so the challenge is to make a user base fast enough that it make more sense to yahoo ,google ,msn ,amazon to acquire you than bothering to develop a new application from scratch .i am counting on this for my venture how about you