What Venture Capitalists are Investing in Right Now

When you are looking to raise venture capital for your startup, you will likely have a better chance if you are in an industry that VCs are hot to invest in. Right now, that means mobile research, cloud-computing innovation, and social computing companies, according to the most recent MoneyTree Report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association. These types of tech startups have a number of advantages from the investor perspective: they can reach a lot of clients, industry regulation is relatively minimal, and they are relevant, says Mark Cannice, professor of entrepreneurship with the University of San Francisco School of Management.

Also attractive to investors, mobile, social, and cloud research startups don’t require very much money to get off the ground. Conversely, a clean innovation startup, for instance, often requires quite a bit of money to launch: Solar panels and wind turbines are much more expensive to manufacture than an app for your iPhone.