No Better Time, Ever, To Be An Entrepreneur

Friday Feb 3, 2012 by Scott Johnson - Managing Partner, New Atlantic Ventures

I am often asked “what is new and exciting” by pretty much anyone that knows what I do for a living. And it is a great question that I relish answering – usually. Of late, however, I have been responding in a way that needs polish. I will say “smartphones” or “Health IT” or “the cloud” and eyes immediately glaze over because these are so last year and so obvious. So, I thought I would take time on a long train ride to add some color and depth to my answers.

My Top 5 things-to-be-excited-about in 2012 :

1. Smartphone Ubiquity. The smartphone is now a social necessity.
2. Cloud Simplicity. AWS has made it low-cost and quick to launch a business.
3. Cost-aware Healthcare. Consumers are empowered to reduce costs.
4. Startup Liquidity. The Facebook IPO will have some long coattails.
5. Offline business marketing is moving online. Here comes local ad spend.

Each of these on its own is well understood and amply hyped. But when taken together and viewed through the lens through which I look at the world, they constitute one of the greatest moments of entrepreneurial opportunity ever in history. So entrepreneurs in the US, and throughout the world, should be licking their chops!

I will flesh out my thoughts on all five of these individually in subsequent posts.

Scott Johnson is a Managing Partner with New Atlantic Ventures.  You can find this post, as well as additional content on New Atlantic Ventures' blog located here.  You can also follow Scott on Twitter (VC_Scott) by clicking here.

< back to all blog entries