How investors choose markets to invest in, entrepreneurs choosing investors to pursue

Thank you for getting in touch with me. It's great to see a team working on something that will contribute to helping [insert industry, customer type] tighten their operations and that also has social meaning.

While I admire those things, this is likely not a market that I'd pursue as an investor. I tend to pursue markets that are big today and trending towards huge b/c they will likely be defining dimensions of our future world. Security, cloud infrastructure, fintech, blockchain tech, generalized data analysis, health tech, climate solutions, things that allow people who aren't rich to exercise some fundamental want (e.g., moving money, purchasing goods/services they can't today) are some of the themes I pursue. From an investor perspective (not an entrepreneur's necessarily), it's easier for a startup to succeed by engaging with these problems / in these markets because of their sheer size and because they have / will grow to have voracious appetites for technology and are (relatively) filled with decisive, well-funded, free-spending buyers.

Then there are markets that tend to make the majority of investors cautious. I would say HR, government, non-profit and education tech markets are those that generally make investors, especially non-specialists, proceed with extra caution.

The other thing that I've come to observe in my own investing and in others' investing behavior is that while investors can intellectually understand and get excited about lots of businesses and markets, they tend to act when they have some familiarity with the market in question b/c they're more likely to trust their guts and intellectual analyses (unless someone else with a brand name has done the due diligence for them, in which case, they may step outside their zones).

I'd say that probably the best investor prospects will be those who have experience with businesses that have successfully sold to [insert industry, customer type] at scale.

Thank you again.

#Marketselection #Investorselection #Investorbehavior