4 Concepts & Trends that Investors are Financing

As a college student and young entrepreneur myself, I often times feel isolated, walking a tight rope without a safety net. The pressure and stakes are extremely high, as success in this venture dictates what my future will entail. My internal belief system told me this would be a lonely road -- until I met David Mills.

David is a private wealth manger for UBS and is part of the connective tissue that binds the oftentimes disjointed pieces within startup community. Last year, along with providing his services to several young companies, he was a co-sponsor of Inc’s “Top 30 Under 30” and was involved in Mashable’s Startup Showdown. While he has a variety of clients, his passion is in watching young entrepreneurs succeed by leveraging his networks and expertise.

In the past he has helped companies by sharing corporate facilities, conference rooms and resources, introductions to venture capitalists and angel investors, financial advice and even consulting around young company’s capital formation structure. It doesn’t really matter what industry you are in – David is happy and willing to help.

“His enthusiasm for entrepreneurship is in helping young guys shoot for the stars,” says Benjamin Wald, President and Founder of Knetwit, Inc - a startup that enables students to download free notes or get paid for sharing their own. At just 21-years old, Wald raised $4.9 million to fund his startup, Knetwit.com. From the experience, the two formed a close, personal relationship.

“The personal relationship is what I look for,” says Mills. “I enjoy watching the businesses develop real-time. Being able to meet people on the front-end enables me to add more value for them and their businesses."

Being deeply ingrained in the finance and tech-world, David was willing to share some insight as to where investments are still being made in this economy. Although recessions can be tough with layoffs reaching nearly 70,000 on some days, they often help accelerate creative destruction.

1. General areas of strong investment growth include mobile and online advertising, gaming and education. “All these continue to be very hot and will stay hot and accelerate rapidly as we come out of this recession,” says Mills. “The movement from print to online and mobile advertising continues to be attractive.” Google killing their print ad program last week is further confirmation of this ongoing migration.

2. Concepts that offer monetary incentives to share content. “Incentive based programs can be especially effective during recessions, as the sharpest individuals – those you want the info from in the first place – are looking for additional sources of income during downturns.” Sure, we are in a “recession”, but that concept alone cripples way too many people from taking the first step. “For startups, downturns nearly always provide phenomenal opportunities to increase market share or re-tool an existing idea where flaws have been exposed.” Well, that’s how entrepreneurs think anyways.

3. Concepts that help facilitate and accelerate commerce or micro-commerce, mainly through portable devices. “We're just scratching the surface here, but we're certainly redefining portable device applications on a daily basis,” says Mills. “We should expect to see many more applications that will make daily commerce more efficient.”

4. Concepts that breakdown traditional barriers for technology adoption. “From a blogging standpoint, this is what Posterous, Twitpic and Tumblr are accomplishing,” explains Mills. “While each site has a very different approach, they’ve all created a pleasant and un-intimidating user environment by simplifying or even eliminating the registration process. As a result, they are embracing a much broader user base.” The first time you visit a new website, think about how quickly you make a determination as to whether or not you sign-up or revisit. It’s almost instantaneous, and the startup world is starting to notice.

If your startup doesn’t fall into one of these four buckets, there is another important lesson you should take from David; the way you conduct yourself and your internal beliefs will ultimately determine your success. Treat everyone with respect, be obsessed with opportunity, and enjoy every step of the process.