

The Fastest Growing Areas of Startup Investment in 2015 - prostoalex
http://tomtunguz.com/fastest-growing-areas-investment-2015/

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personjerry
As the article even points out, "fastest growing" in % means almost nothing. I
funded this niche market for $1 last year, now I'm funding it for $100. Look
at that 10000% growth! And yet it still doesn't provide the absolute values,
or even numbers of funding from other categories for comparison. In short, not
a useful presentation of data.

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w1ntermute
[https://xkcd.com/1102/](https://xkcd.com/1102/)

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twlng
According to the article, investment in 'Photo Sharing' is growing by 150%.

Leaving aside the ambiguity in that statement, is there a list of 'photo
sharing' startups that have received investment recently?

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bfung
It's also weird - my gut feel is that photo sharing is done. Facebook,
Instagram, Snapchat, Flickr, Dropbox, Apple iCloud stuff, Google+ stuff,
Smugmug... etc.

If the investments are going to those companies (and if they are considered
"startups" still), I'd understand. But small companies trying to "disrupt"
this space!?!?

I'm suspicious of the data on this one. Or that the investors are not very
good at investing.

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ashurbanipal
Thank you for this article, the data is great. Since you've speculated as to
the causes of the declines in the markets with large declines could you
speculate on the reasons for the fastest markets to be growing as quickly as
they have? Or on markets which you would think should be growing more quickly
but aren't?

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rdlecler1
Totally missed agtech. The food and agriculture sector is the third largest
market in the world, it employs $1.3b people, and the tech is in the earliest
days.

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ttunguz
Here's the data for ag tech. For 2012 - 2015 (ytd).

167, 561, 456, 108.

Pretty big drop-off in 2015. On an annualized basis, if the trend continues,
we should expect a 50% decline.

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ttunguz
Those figures are in $M

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dang
Url changed from [http://qz.com/457818/bitcoin-space-travel-venture-capital-
fu...](http://qz.com/457818/bitcoin-space-travel-venture-capital-funding/),
which points to this.

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Okaywithcrap
Both are worthless, and will not be used to try to attempt passing the
beginner stuff.

;-)

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dataker
Interesting data:

Banking - 65%

Bitcoin - 151%

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minimaxir
The fact that the time horizon is spread over 3-4 years makes the analysis
misleading.

Case in point, Bitcoin was a nonfactor in 2012 (hence the high "growth"), but
VC for Bitcoin firms has dried up in 2015, with most Bitcoin startups either
dying or pivoting to more generic financial instruments/blockchain tech.

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ttunguz
Hey, I'm the author. Actually, the data doesn't support this statement. Here's
financing by year for BTC companies in $M (non inflation adj). Note 2015 is
only through June, so BTC investment should grow 45% y/y, if the pace holds.

year industry amount($M) 2012 Bitcoin 4.75000 2013 Bitcoin 54.47459 2014
Bitcoin 259.57000 2015 Bitcoin 189.40000

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mwilcox
I'd be interested where you're getting your numbers - there was a popular
article floating aroudn a couple of days ago about VC capital invested into
Bitcoin already passing the 2014 total:
[http://cointelegraph.com/news/114862/bitcoin-capital-
investm...](http://cointelegraph.com/news/114862/bitcoin-capital-investment-
in-2015-quickly-passes-2014-totals)

189m seems low considering 21, inc. alone raised over $110m.

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ttunguz
it's mattermark data.

