Some of my notes for the session I was at
21 August 2009 – http://www.ccice.org/EconomicDevelopment.html

Where is the Money Flowing into Mobile and Wireless

Eric Chan, Mobileslate
He was a great moderator
Also teaches at Carnegie Mellon
VC activity has picked up for Q2 over Q1 but only 26 telecoms deals
Lowest VC fundraising for Q2 2009 since Q1 2003
Good incubation funds out their Y Combinator, iFund, FBfund, etc
Most international business operators have an outpost in Silicon Valley to follow the new trends
Operators can only implement 3-4 big ideas each year – so complex

Kevin Spain, Principal, Emergence Capital
Cloud and SaaS now crossed the charm and are mainstream
Emergence Capital is well funded, but many VC’s are not in this position
Good time to start a company – lots of good talent, property is cheaper
Hit driven business is hard for VC’s (consumer apps)
Enterprise Apps are interesting – must be really mobile and really useful (add in LBS etc to CRM) – driven by business needs for mobile workers and have a great UI
How to manage many devices on many networks from the enterprise spend side
Corporate Venture money comes with caveats – best for later stage rounds
For a vertical market play you must have deep vertical market expertise and it must be a big market and they must have historically big IT spends
Likes intersection of enterprise, social communities and mobile
Likes gaming and mobile and social intersection – social game networks, platforms etc

David Aslin, Venture Partner, Nexit
Most down rounds are in series C or later and brings companies back to a more realistic valuation so is a good thing
Series A syndication activity is picking up – also a good sign for new startups
See phone as an IT device and less as just a “phone” – it is key to how people organize their daily life
Hard to get just an idea funded by VC’s for series A – need some traction or need a stellar team or stellar idea – look for angel funding first
Healthcare and mobile is interesting – home based monitoring
What are the big unsolved problems? These are interesting to VC’s:
Range of diversity in platform, operating systems, phones etc – need more toolkits to delivery app more broadly (like mobile distillery)
Cloud computing for networking infrastructure
Overlap of wireless and cleantech – infrastructure, M2M, (more…)