Ron Conway's Confidential Investment Guide: The Tech Megatrends

Angel investors SV Angel, led by Ron Conway invests so early in startups that he looks mostly at the team and current tech trends when making investment decisions.

Last year he was focusing on real time and location startups. This year, according to a confidential report to SV Angel investors that made its way into our hands, he’s looking at a whole slew of trends.

How a startup plays into these trends is taken into consideration when SV Angel ponders an investment. The trends include:

  • Social
  • Real Time
  • Location Based Services
  • The Urban Entrepreneur
  • Mobile
  • Flash Sales
  • Behavior & Transactions

We’ve included a screenshot of the relevant slide, click on it for a larger view (or click here). The slide also contains sample startups in each category.

The most fascinating trend is the “Urban Entrepreneur” – which SV Angel says is represented by startups like Twitter and Foursquare. “A new field of entrepreneurs is developing where key insights are coming from founders in large cities” says the report. It adds “[technology tools]…have led entrepreneurs to find innovation in behavior, rather than technology, at least within social media.”