The world is changing very rapidly. Markets are crashing, money is disappearing, new unions are being created, the old ones are being destroyed.

The investments are not as they were even a year ago. VC’s didn’t get any wiser but they’ve gotten more precautious. On one hand they have to spend the money cause it’s losing its value every day, on the other hand they cannot spend it on the startups that don’t make any profit.

For VCs

What should the VCs do to at least try to stay on the safe side of things and not lose all their investments:

  • Only invest in startups that are profitable as of today
  • Stop throwing money away by investing in copy cats that are sharing the same markets
  • Don’t invest in startups that are not ready to explore totally new markets
  • Europe won’t be a big market in the next 2-10 years - look elsewhere
  • The safest European countries to still invest in are Great Britain, Spain, Portugal
  • The least safest European countries are the Baltic States
  • US are still a good market to invest in

A bit more on Great Britain - The Commonwealth is one of the biggest English Speaking markets worldwide and will not only stay relatively stable but will grow together even stronger, so it will be easier for startups to roll out in the new Commonwealth country and thus get more customers. Spain and Portugal will fall into the realm of Great Britain with a very high probability.

African market will stay very turbulent and unpredictable - it can yield very high profits but can also bring very high losses. The same will be true for Latin America and some parts of Asia.

For the startups

If you start a company in Germany now - start looking at other markets immediately. German market will crash very soon. Middle class will practically cease to exist - people won’t be able to pay for your product. The only thing you will be able to sell here are microloans. Even if it sounds funny to you - if you want to build product for German speakers - start your business in Austria, not Germany.

If you are a startup based in France, be prepared to expand your business to a former french colony, France will start being active in their former colonies again - they won’t have any other markets to operate in.

Spain and Portugal - it probably sounds suspicious but you are on a safer side of things. Prepare to work with the Commonwealth countries. You will have quite a market soon.

If you haven’t started to build your product yet - start looking into the AgTech space - VCs should and will start investing more and more into agriculture.

Concluding Thoughts

The world is not going to be the same anymore. Be prepared to do more with less and open absolutely new markets for yourself.