Using Google's search trend data we compared search interest in a particular industry with the amount of money invested into said industry. Doing so allows us to get a better understanding of the public’s interest in hot investment industries. For the most part, public interest seems to only rise after a significant investment period which makes sense as investors are likely to market their investments to the public by this point. Of particular interest however is the Cloud Computing industry, which seemed to get a lot of public interest before significant investments occured. Peak search interest in Cloud Computing occured in 2010-2011 which are the same years in which Google relased Microsoft Azure and Apple released iCloud.
Hovering over this map shows the number of investments made on a state by state basis (at the time of which our data was collected). In the United States, most investments are consolidated within a few states: California, New York, Massachusetts, Texas, and Washington. These states holding the top spots is consistent with expectations as these are all major hotspots for start-ups.
Venture capitalist firms have a wide range of sectors that they invest in with the top 50 VCs having a very similar sector breakdown of their portfolios as the the overall sector breakdown of investments. Most notably, the top 50 VCs appear to not invest in Biotechnology nearly as much and split their portfolios evenly across all sectors with no particular sector being invested in much more than another.
January sees the most activity in both the overall number of investments made and the number of companies being acquired. We believe this is likely due to tax reasons as January is the beginning of the Tax season. October sees the highest number of acquisitions following January.
Domestic investments are far more common than international investments. The exception to this trend is Wayra which is located in Madrid, Spain.