The economy remains rocky, and launching a new business idea takes some intestinal fortitude and willingness to take risks. But there probably has never been a better time to get out in the marketplace. 
In the year ahead, there will be lots of opportunities to move forward with new innovations. Along these lines, Inc.’s Eric Markowitz recently compiled the predictions on where the deals will be for startups and new business lines, provided by leading venture capitalists and startup gurus:
1) A 10-million-user Web startup, bootstrapped with little funding. “The costs of starting a company are asymptotically approaching zero… You (technically) need little more than an Internet connection and some coding skills to start a consumer Web company.” Also, expect to see 16-year-old entrepreneurs receiving funding as well for their new ideas. -Patrick Chung, NEA
2) More companies will adopt the “freemium” model. The freemium model is particularly strong in the gaming sector, “but the interesting thing in 2012 has been the move into other industry verticals. For instance, wireless services.” -Pete Moran, DCM
3) More companies adopting subscription-based models as well. Sites offering “curation” services are rising to help consumers get around endless searching for information across the huge Internet. “The companies that are curating–and it’s in a number of categories–they have an expertise, and they have subscribers who have loosely committed to buying every month.” -Mike Kwatinetz, Azure Capital Partners
4) Business-to-business finally becomes “sexy.” “Over the past 6-to-12 months, we’ve started to do more B2B deals” for “vertical solutions in what we’d call boring or unsexy activities such as B2B sales automation. SaaS for IT. Things that people would typically yawn at, versus the more shiny B2C start-ups.” -Jeff Clavier, SoftTech VC
5) Marketing becomes as hot as tech. “By 2017, CMOs will be spending more on IT than CIOs. Driving this massive shift is the customer data that simply did not exist a decade ago.” -Ajay Agarwal, Bain Capital Ventures
6) Service marketplaces — not individual suppliers — will become the “brand.” Just as Amazon has become a leading brand for books (versus individual publishers), consumers will look to branded marketplaces for various services, such as teaching, cleaning, or construction. -Eric Chin, general partner, Crosslink Capital
(Photo: US Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
(Thumbnail photo: Patrick Chung, partner, NEA, from NEA Website.)
