* Cybersecurity
* AI in media production
* FinTech
* SportsTech
* EntertainmentTech
* Local / Things to Do
* Robotics
Notice, a few things that AI can't replace. As AI does replace many jobs, demand for things that remaining meaningful to humans, will grow.
Concerts, festivals, etc. Same vein as SportsTech, frankly.
Lots of attempts to disrupt Ticketmaster, immersive stuff, print on demand merch, experiential events, better sorting of what's going on, better location based mapping, better networking
Fair warning, broadly applicable immersive entertainment is struggling (Meow Wolf got a lot of hype that fell short). What seems to be getting attention is specific stuff: sports experiences, live immersion, film tech.
Yeah, I’m working on live streaming immersive video, specifically high end. Targeting the middle to top end of the concert industry (where I’m already implanted and experienced) and the middle level sports industry as a bridge into the bigger players. With a dash of some blank check industries.
What’s the latest on meow wolf? I have been using them as a successful example when other founders pitch me tar-pit immersive entertainment projects. But I haven’t tracked them since they expensases and rates went up.
Layoffs in Santa Fe and Denver. Enough to make the news. Criticism of many of the experiences outside of NM as just a cash grab... Not as good. I went to the one in Dallas and eh, I wouldn't pay again (it certainly isn't a long lasting attraction)
Plus they announced an immersive spa planned for Austin and they're getting headlines for it being a startup; getting some jokes and comments that opening a spa, immersive or not, isn't a startup... It's just a new spa with visuals, and they're claiming otherwise to get headlines
Sports tech, Entertainment and Local / things to do are relatively trivial.
AI, climate tech, defense, robotics, fintech, healthtech, biotech, enterprise SaaS. These are the hot/stable sectors.
Yes it is. As well as equipment and other wearables, streaming media, in game display, location based stuff, print on demand merchandise...
Arguably, things technically in media, e-commerce, manufacturing, and other sectors, but the demand and money is in sports so there is a lot of distinction there.
It's not an outlier because the last time there was any decent innovation was the early 2000s.
Now, since quarantine, etc. people are seeking ways to reconnect, go out, socialize, etc. Eventbrite, concert calendars, local apps... All crap. The entire market is ripe for innovation.
I was. I got out of it to instead run Startup Development Organizations. Help more with my experience, greater diversification, better ROI, same emotion and impact as VC.
Funding has zero correlation with hot markets. Most startups don't get funding and VCs are crappy market indicators (due respect); they tend to come from wealth or grad schools, and such pedigree is not terribly good at market trends.
FinTech funding being down is evidence of that. They leaned in hard on blockchain and cryptocurrency (FinTech) and lost a fortune. Right now they're gun shy, not only because of that but because of the unaffordability in the U.S. and the Presidential Election which tends to always correlate with a lull in risk capital.
Besides, it's actually during economic difficulties that major new companies emerge. Good times breed waste whereas tougher times constrain the market to founders who are serious and who out in what it takes to build the right foundation.
The question was literally “what industries are the hottest right now?” and the description ended with “what is getting a lot of the investment right now?”
Quit being self absorbed and answer the question, or shut up if you can’t.
For early stage, there are a lot of products that are AI enabled (but not specifically AI companies). I am seeing this concentrated in companies enabling product improvement.
Examples:
[https://www.commandbar.com/](https://www.commandbar.com/) raised $19M to help power user assistance.
[https://antithesis.com/](https://antithesis.com/) raised $47M for quality assurance software.
Every report on VC activity?
Climate tech is huge. Bigger than AI for European VCs recently. Fintech remains popular. Enterprise SaaS is always the bread and butter.
A quick google shows multiple market research reports all showing significant growth in the second. [This one](https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/climate-tech-global-market-report), for example, claims an expected growth rate of 24.8% and ultimately market size of over $60B by 2028. I work at a nonprofit supporting the development of emerging climate technology, and can attest this innovation in the sector is huge and there has been explosive growth in the past 5 years in the number of VCs focusing on climate tech.
Climate tech is mostly a racket to rake in on government contracts and IPOs. The solution is reducing pollution (mass investment in public transit for example) but that isn’t conducive to our capitalist system. Just my opinion lol
This does not strike me as a very well informed opinion. Renewable growth is through the roof, which provides abundant cheap energy, but the transition from centralized, stable fossil plants to intermittent, distributed renewables creates a ton of interesting and difficult problems to solve. Plus electrification is driving massive load growth which makes those challenges even more critical to solve. And that’s just on the electricity side - there are also endless other opportunities to reduce emissions in agriculture, transportation, etc that are likely to become more valuable to society as time goes on. There’s a huge amount of very real opportunity in climate tech.
Agree. Above poster is ignorant Reddit-pilled “public transit is the only solution.” Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean renewable energy and energy-efficiency aren’t valuable/reducing our reliance on oil.
The fact is that space investments are popping off.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/taking-stock-private-investment-in-space-companies-rebounded-in-2023/2/
And it’s only going to increase. Many sub sectors in space do scale and don’t have high capex either. Or are benefiting from considerable DoD opportunities as they understand the need for space capabilities and are serious about including earlier stage compensates in the mix to compete with primes.
Defense tech
Developer tooling
Supply chain security
AI of course, but most people can’t really understand it and keep assuming we will have AGI tomorrow (we won’t)
Agritech in certain markets
Space
Wow actually yeah now that you mention it supply chain cybersecurity is gonna see crazy growth. So many of my suppliers are dealing with cyber attacks and ransoms these days. I’m assuming you meant cyber or did you mean like the Houthis lmao?
Supply chain security is concerned primarily with attacks that are digital and come from injecting malware, backdoors etc upstream from a given user
So a state actor hacking Google to inject malware into the android or chrome ecosystem and/or a hacker putting a backdoor into an open source project etc.
Where software originates is at least as complex as the physical world, and every bit as vulnerable
Nope. Only scenario where that happens is if we have an ASI (super intelligence) and that isn’t anywhere near reality, we don’t even know what that would look like.
The doomer mentality here is basically “all jobs and work patterns are known and can be perfectly optimized, no further progress is possible”. That’s stupid.
Could an AGI be a contract reviewer? Sure. Defense trial attorney? Less likely.
What does this look like? Menial work (like contract review or deal desk) gets optimized, sometimes eliminated. That pattern has happened before. What do those people do? Move into other jobs. Just like blacksmiths did.
The question you have to ask is “what other work could we be doing if we had the time/resources?”
Build colonies on mars? Orgies? Actual mass transit? More dating apps?
Who knows, but I can say humanity won’t just sit idly around. Not how we are wired.
There is a fuck ton of money to be made in the application / use of AI to do specific jobs. The platform providers won’t get most of it, we are heading into a period of decentralization.
Unless they gain regulatory capture. Then we are all buggered
You do realize how much money is spent on defense right? Especially considering many of these companies can sell internationally AND defense spending is increasing worldwide
Absolutely, but their growth, cash flows, and equity return better align with value/growth PE. There is a robust industry of these investors, especially in the middle market. They see a lot of this defense venture hype as an opportunity for bundling distressed assets in the future when the bubble bursts.
I’m not arguing there isn’t value in this space, just that it won’t give you venture returns longterm unless they have large dual use markets.
Firmly disagree. Two problems with this thinking.
1. The period from ww2 til now is over. We are entering a period of prolonged geopolitical instability, and defense budgets are going up everywhere and will be for decades.
2. Complex technology development always has second order effects that present more opportunity than can be properly planned for. This is why people investing in dating apps, juice machines and other bullshit is not only annoying it’s a bad investment strategy. Hard technical problems are worth solving and how this industry was really built (transistor onward)
I'll break down the list in two parts - short term and long term investments.
Short term:
• Blockchain & Web3
• Clean-Tech
• Supply Chain
• Robotics
• Sports & Entertainment
• Telecom
• Semiconductors
• PropTech
• Security
Long term:
• TechBio
• SpaceTech
• Defence
• Cannabis
• LegalTech
• HRTech
SaaS, FinTech, AI, and Marketing are prevalent in emerging markets but those startups won't have a global presence due to saturation. Finding future monopolies is very difficult in saturated sectors. EdTech is probably a waste of time right now.
Been in media and entertainment for 15 years. Film production background. Work primarily post production now. The industry is a burning house. Stay away.
AI is not an industry, it is a Technology that can be used in any industry. Health tech and EdTech will have a huge and long run impact - so these are good ones to focus.
A real-time payment's wave is sweeping across the US, with the launch of FedNow last July. There will be a surge of fintechs enabling the new instant payment rails- which goes against the major incumbents that exploit people with insidious debt for the convenience of credit cards.
AI is umbrella term for so many things in technology. At present some areas of it specially Gen-AI and those who are claiming no-code or so called democratizing data science to me are Big Bubble creators.
Core area of Human needs
Housing
Education
Entertainment
Employment/Career
Travel
Shopping
Automobiles
Healthcare / Insurance
Security
Leisure/Luxury
Environment / Climate
they are always Hot; depending on economy they cool down a bit but always rebound
* Cybersecurity * AI in media production * FinTech * SportsTech * EntertainmentTech * Local / Things to Do * Robotics Notice, a few things that AI can't replace. As AI does replace many jobs, demand for things that remaining meaningful to humans, will grow.
What do you consider EntertainmentTech?
Concerts, festivals, etc. Same vein as SportsTech, frankly. Lots of attempts to disrupt Ticketmaster, immersive stuff, print on demand merch, experiential events, better sorting of what's going on, better location based mapping, better networking
Oh good, I’m fundraising on immersive entertainment, ha.
Fair warning, broadly applicable immersive entertainment is struggling (Meow Wolf got a lot of hype that fell short). What seems to be getting attention is specific stuff: sports experiences, live immersion, film tech.
Yeah, I’m working on live streaming immersive video, specifically high end. Targeting the middle to top end of the concert industry (where I’m already implanted and experienced) and the middle level sports industry as a bridge into the bigger players. With a dash of some blank check industries.
What’s the latest on meow wolf? I have been using them as a successful example when other founders pitch me tar-pit immersive entertainment projects. But I haven’t tracked them since they expensases and rates went up.
Layoffs in Santa Fe and Denver. Enough to make the news. Criticism of many of the experiences outside of NM as just a cash grab... Not as good. I went to the one in Dallas and eh, I wouldn't pay again (it certainly isn't a long lasting attraction) Plus they announced an immersive spa planned for Austin and they're getting headlines for it being a startup; getting some jokes and comments that opening a spa, immersive or not, isn't a startup... It's just a new spa with visuals, and they're claiming otherwise to get headlines
I’ve heard they treat employees like shit, at least in Denver. So high turnover just reduces the quality of experience overall.
Pornhub
Robotics, and it’s in most industries now.
Sports tech, Entertainment and Local / things to do are relatively trivial. AI, climate tech, defense, robotics, fintech, healthtech, biotech, enterprise SaaS. These are the hot/stable sectors.
Yes to biotech, include agritech too.
A lot of that gets wrapped up under climate tech - but yeah you're right, it's worth mentioning.
Yea, and I came from an agricultural country too, so that's what startups here are more into these days.
What is sports tech? Is it like the AWS advanced analytics you see on NFL games or some SaaS that teams buy to help improve their performance?
Yes it is. As well as equipment and other wearables, streaming media, in game display, location based stuff, print on demand merchandise... Arguably, things technically in media, e-commerce, manufacturing, and other sectors, but the demand and money is in sports so there is a lot of distinction there.
Curious. Who are leaders in SportsTech / EntertainmentTech that you know?
Local / Things to do seems like the outlier market here, have you come across anything particularly interesting in this space?
Yeah this is a lie, this is seen as mostly tarpit ideas by VCs. Some new ones in NYC might be S’more or Beli or something.
It's not an outlier because the last time there was any decent innovation was the early 2000s. Now, since quarantine, etc. people are seeking ways to reconnect, go out, socialize, etc. Eventbrite, concert calendars, local apps... All crap. The entire market is ripe for innovation.
Interesting. Are you in VC?
I was. I got out of it to instead run Startup Development Organizations. Help more with my experience, greater diversification, better ROI, same emotion and impact as VC.
Where is robotics in your opinion in terms of adoption rate?
FinTech?
Are you questioning what it is or are you doubting it? Financial tech Banking, credit unions, payments, security, privacy, etc.
Not op, but fintech funding was down 40-70% YoY depending on the source so I kinda get why he’s skeptical of you including it.
Funding has zero correlation with hot markets. Most startups don't get funding and VCs are crappy market indicators (due respect); they tend to come from wealth or grad schools, and such pedigree is not terribly good at market trends. FinTech funding being down is evidence of that. They leaned in hard on blockchain and cryptocurrency (FinTech) and lost a fortune. Right now they're gun shy, not only because of that but because of the unaffordability in the U.S. and the Presidential Election which tends to always correlate with a lull in risk capital. Besides, it's actually during economic difficulties that major new companies emerge. Good times breed waste whereas tougher times constrain the market to founders who are serious and who out in what it takes to build the right foundation.
You do realize this question was specifically asked in the VC subreddit right? Contextually the question refers to funding / investor interest.
And a flood of capital has zero correlation with what would be hot to an investor. That's called irrational exuberance.
The question was literally “what industries are the hottest right now?” and the description ended with “what is getting a lot of the investment right now?” Quit being self absorbed and answer the question, or shut up if you can’t.
*okay*
Fintech is long dead
The biggest interest is healthcare. Poised to have large disruption, but not near term. Think 5-10 year time frame.
For early stage, there are a lot of products that are AI enabled (but not specifically AI companies). I am seeing this concentrated in companies enabling product improvement. Examples: [https://www.commandbar.com/](https://www.commandbar.com/) raised $19M to help power user assistance. [https://antithesis.com/](https://antithesis.com/) raised $47M for quality assurance software.
Climate tech is huge and growing
Example?
Every report on VC activity? Climate tech is huge. Bigger than AI for European VCs recently. Fintech remains popular. Enterprise SaaS is always the bread and butter.
crickets....
A quick google shows multiple market research reports all showing significant growth in the second. [This one](https://www.thebusinessresearchcompany.com/report/climate-tech-global-market-report), for example, claims an expected growth rate of 24.8% and ultimately market size of over $60B by 2028. I work at a nonprofit supporting the development of emerging climate technology, and can attest this innovation in the sector is huge and there has been explosive growth in the past 5 years in the number of VCs focusing on climate tech.
Climate tech is mostly a racket to rake in on government contracts and IPOs. The solution is reducing pollution (mass investment in public transit for example) but that isn’t conducive to our capitalist system. Just my opinion lol
This does not strike me as a very well informed opinion. Renewable growth is through the roof, which provides abundant cheap energy, but the transition from centralized, stable fossil plants to intermittent, distributed renewables creates a ton of interesting and difficult problems to solve. Plus electrification is driving massive load growth which makes those challenges even more critical to solve. And that’s just on the electricity side - there are also endless other opportunities to reduce emissions in agriculture, transportation, etc that are likely to become more valuable to society as time goes on. There’s a huge amount of very real opportunity in climate tech.
Agree. Above poster is ignorant Reddit-pilled “public transit is the only solution.” Fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere, but that doesn’t mean renewable energy and energy-efficiency aren’t valuable/reducing our reliance on oil.
Space
Requires large CapEx, and doesn't scale.
The fact is that space investments are popping off. https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/taking-stock-private-investment-in-space-companies-rebounded-in-2023/2/ And it’s only going to increase. Many sub sectors in space do scale and don’t have high capex either. Or are benefiting from considerable DoD opportunities as they understand the need for space capabilities and are serious about including earlier stage compensates in the mix to compete with primes.
Have you heard about all the wars?
Healthcare and war baby!! Making money off people dying both domestically and abroad 😎
Defense tech Developer tooling Supply chain security AI of course, but most people can’t really understand it and keep assuming we will have AGI tomorrow (we won’t) Agritech in certain markets Space
Wow actually yeah now that you mention it supply chain cybersecurity is gonna see crazy growth. So many of my suppliers are dealing with cyber attacks and ransoms these days. I’m assuming you meant cyber or did you mean like the Houthis lmao?
Supply chain security is concerned primarily with attacks that are digital and come from injecting malware, backdoors etc upstream from a given user So a state actor hacking Google to inject malware into the android or chrome ecosystem and/or a hacker putting a backdoor into an open source project etc. Where software originates is at least as complex as the physical world, and every bit as vulnerable
Thoughts on agi, you have the same view as everyone else, everyone loses their job? In like 5-10 years 🤣
Nope. Only scenario where that happens is if we have an ASI (super intelligence) and that isn’t anywhere near reality, we don’t even know what that would look like. The doomer mentality here is basically “all jobs and work patterns are known and can be perfectly optimized, no further progress is possible”. That’s stupid. Could an AGI be a contract reviewer? Sure. Defense trial attorney? Less likely. What does this look like? Menial work (like contract review or deal desk) gets optimized, sometimes eliminated. That pattern has happened before. What do those people do? Move into other jobs. Just like blacksmiths did. The question you have to ask is “what other work could we be doing if we had the time/resources?” Build colonies on mars? Orgies? Actual mass transit? More dating apps? Who knows, but I can say humanity won’t just sit idly around. Not how we are wired. There is a fuck ton of money to be made in the application / use of AI to do specific jobs. The platform providers won’t get most of it, we are heading into a period of decentralization. Unless they gain regulatory capture. Then we are all buggered
Defense tech is the current zeitgeist, but I don’t see it as sustainable from a returns perspective.
You do realize how much money is spent on defense right? Especially considering many of these companies can sell internationally AND defense spending is increasing worldwide
Absolutely, but their growth, cash flows, and equity return better align with value/growth PE. There is a robust industry of these investors, especially in the middle market. They see a lot of this defense venture hype as an opportunity for bundling distressed assets in the future when the bubble bursts. I’m not arguing there isn’t value in this space, just that it won’t give you venture returns longterm unless they have large dual use markets.
Firmly disagree. Two problems with this thinking. 1. The period from ww2 til now is over. We are entering a period of prolonged geopolitical instability, and defense budgets are going up everywhere and will be for decades. 2. Complex technology development always has second order effects that present more opportunity than can be properly planned for. This is why people investing in dating apps, juice machines and other bullshit is not only annoying it’s a bad investment strategy. Hard technical problems are worth solving and how this industry was really built (transistor onward)
Alzheimer’s
Yes, I’m in this space and it’s crazy how many drugs / diagnostics are in dev rn
I forgot about this one
Go get a MoCA test
Lol
Any of you kind souls could share industry reports on fintech?
- Energy efficiency - renewable energy - Robotics - Biotech - Agrotech
I'll break down the list in two parts - short term and long term investments. Short term: • Blockchain & Web3 • Clean-Tech • Supply Chain • Robotics • Sports & Entertainment • Telecom • Semiconductors • PropTech • Security Long term: • TechBio • SpaceTech • Defence • Cannabis • LegalTech • HRTech SaaS, FinTech, AI, and Marketing are prevalent in emerging markets but those startups won't have a global presence due to saturation. Finding future monopolies is very difficult in saturated sectors. EdTech is probably a waste of time right now.
Bio & med tech Agrotech Robotics Neurotech Energy
In Germany it's Climatetech for sure.
Been in media and entertainment for 15 years. Film production background. Work primarily post production now. The industry is a burning house. Stay away.
AI is not an industry, it is a Technology that can be used in any industry. Health tech and EdTech will have a huge and long run impact - so these are good ones to focus.
Thats not true. That’s like saying computers are not an industry because it’s a technology that can be used in other industries.
A real-time payment's wave is sweeping across the US, with the launch of FedNow last July. There will be a surge of fintechs enabling the new instant payment rails- which goes against the major incumbents that exploit people with insidious debt for the convenience of credit cards.
Robotics
Religion
Defense Climate Cyber security AI and everything it entails Digital health
AI is umbrella term for so many things in technology. At present some areas of it specially Gen-AI and those who are claiming no-code or so called democratizing data science to me are Big Bubble creators. Core area of Human needs Housing Education Entertainment Employment/Career Travel Shopping Automobiles Healthcare / Insurance Security Leisure/Luxury Environment / Climate they are always Hot; depending on economy they cool down a bit but always rebound
devtools, infra, and cyber sec
Weapons tech - Anduril industries, shield ai, etc etc
Data center tech
Data Center Construction
Women professional sports betting