In their list of top 10 business opportunities in a down economy, John Assaraf and Murray Smith, founders of OneCoach, a provider of small-business coaching services, recommend the following:

1. Business coaching: As employees get downsized, upsized or just plain sick of their jobs, more of them are starting their own businesses. You can be there to provide the coaching and mentorship they need to succeed.
2. Social networking for business: Take advantage of the interactivity of social networking to connect with prospects and help other businesses do the same.
3. Alternative fuels: Help consumers cut their energy costs with alternative fuels and products that boost fuel efficiency.
4. Environmental services: It’s the greening of America, and it’s only just begun.
5. Health care: People are living longer and need health-care products and services to help them maintain a good quality of life.
6. Nail salons/beauty products: Think fewer facelifts and more facials. People will always tend to their appearance, even in a down economy.
7. Discount retailers: Give people what they want at deep discounts, just as Wal-Mart and 99 Cents Only Stores do.
8. Luxury products: Interestingly, yacht sales are up, as are sales of Prada skirts. There are still consumers with money who are willing to spend it.
9. IT and technology services: Help business travelers cut the cost of flying with virtual meetings.
10. Credit and debt management: Show consumers how to tighten their purse strings even further.

Everybody know that if you wat to raise money for a startup you should ask them to Ventur Captalist Fund or to Angels. But what’s the real difference? When to aks to the first ones, and when to second ones? This article form entrepreneur.com should help you. The article has been written by Bred Feld an early stage investor.

As a venture capitalist, I get approached several times a day by entrepreneurs looking to raise money. One of my typical responses is, “You shouldn’t be talking to me; you should be targeting angel investors.”

The source of this confusion varies: Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding of the different roles and expectations of a venture capitalist vs. an angel investor. Other times it’s a lack of clarity on the part of the entrepreneur regarding what he or she wants to accomplish with both the business and the financing. Regardless of the source of the confusion, here are a few guidelines for determining whether you should be approaching venture capitalists or angels for your financing.

• The amount of money you’re raising in this round: If you’re raising less than $1 million, you’re likely wasting your time targeting venture capitalists, with two exceptions: 1) you specifically target funds that do seed rounds, or 2) you have a preexisting relationship with a VC firm and want to put together a seed round to get going quickly.
• The total amount of money you’re looking to raise over the life of your company: If you think you can get your company to a point where it’s cash-flow positive on less than $3 million, stick with angels.
• The type of company you’re building: Venture capitalists love to fund businesses with the potential to be enormous. Angels love this, too, but they’re much more willing to fund smaller companies that will presumably require less capital. In addition, most venture capitalists want to fund businesses that have clearly defined economies of scale (such as software companies) vs. ones that scale linearly with some factor (such as service companies).
• Your experience: Successful serial entrepreneurs always find it easier to raise money from venture capitalists. If you’re a first-time entrepreneur, that doesn’t mean you can’t raise VC money, but you’re going to find it more difficult than an experienced entrepreneur will.
• Your network: If you’ve never met a venture capitalist before and none of your colleagues have built companies with VC funds, you’re at a disadvantage by having to start from scratch. In contrast, if your best friend’s father is the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company, you have a good shot at quickly getting plugged into a powerful set of angels.

As with all guidelines, there are plenty of exceptions. One seems to hold in most angel financings: the rule of thirds. A third of your financing will come from one investor, the second third will come from a set of people following that investor and the last third will be random. So make sure you go hunting for your lead investor.

That’s not what you’d expect. I would have guessed difficulty in raising funds would be linear, but it isn’t.

The primary reason is that there are two typical investors: angels and VCs. Angels are just wealthy people who typically sums of between $10 and $100k, with $50k probably being a good average.

VCs are institutional investors who raise funds often totaling in the hundreds of millions, and are paid in such a way that they are incentivized to deploy the entire amount into investments. So, VCs like to make bigger investments because then they can make fewer. That means less due diligence, fewer board meetings, etc.

Not many VCs make it their business to invest amounts of money that small. It happens, but it’s often just something they do to lock up right of first refusal on future rounds. A lot of companies would much rather raise $500k than $5m, so they’ll do it if they like you enough, but it’s relatively uncommon.

Raising $500k from angels means convincing somewhere between 5 and 20 different people, all with their own habits and goals, to invest in you at the same valuation and terms. That happens too actually, even outside of the few syndicates that exist, but again, it’s hard to pull off.

Full Article

Y Combinator says to us what are the main interesting idea fields to invest for them. Here’s the link.

I found very interisting:

• Simplified Browsing
• Enterprise software 2.0
• Online Learning
• Finance software for individuals and small businesses
• Tools for measurement
• Web Office apps

but overall the “bestselling”:

Something your company needs that doesn’t exist