Software can change any company.

Software is becoming essential. Everyone should consider how software affects their lives and others'.

Software on your phone, tablet, or computer offers many new options. We're experts in enough ways now.

Software Business Ideas will be popular by 2023.

ERP Programs

ERP software meets rising demand.

ERP solutions automate and monitor tasks that large organizations, businesses, and even schools would struggle to do manually.

ERP software could reach $49 billion by 2024.

CRM Program

CRM software is a must-have for any customer-focused business.

Having an open mind about your business services and products allows you to change platforms.

Another company may only want your CRM service.

Medical software

Healthcare facilities need reliable, easy-to-use software.

EHRs, MDDBs, E-Prescribing, and more are software options.

The global medical software market could reach $11 billion by 2025, and mobile medical apps may follow.

Presentation Software in the Cloud

SaaS presentation tools are great.

They're easy to use, comprehensive, and full of traditional Software features.

In today's cloud-based world, these solutions make life easier for people. We don't know about you, but we like it.

Software for Project Management

People began working remotely without signs or warnings before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

Many organizations found it difficult to track projects and set deadlines.

With PMP software tools, teams can manage remote units and collaborate effectively.

App for Blockchain-Based Invoicing

This advanced billing and invoicing solution is for businesses and freelancers.

These blockchain-based apps can calculate taxes, manage debts, and manage transactions.

Intelligent contracts help blockchain track transactions more efficiently. It speeds up and improves invoice generation.

Software for Business Communications

Internal business messaging is tricky.

Top business software tools for communication can share files, collaborate on documents, host video conferences, and more.

Payroll Automation System

Software development also includes developing an automated payroll system.

These software systems reduce manual tasks for timely employee payments.

These tools help enterprise clients calculate total wages quickly, simplify tax calculations, improve record-keeping, and support better financial planning.

System for Detecting Data Leaks

Both businesses and individuals value data highly. Yahoo's data breach is dangerous because of this.

This area of software development can help people protect their data.

You can design an advanced data loss prevention system.

AI-based Retail System

AI-powered shopping systems are popular. The systems analyze customers' search and purchase patterns and store history and are equipped with a keyword database.

These systems offer many customers pre-loaded products.

AI-based shopping algorithms also help users make purchases.

Software for Detecting Plagiarism

Software can help ensure your projects are original and not plagiarized.

These tools detect plagiarized content that Google, media, and educational institutions don't like.

Software for Converting Audio to Text

Machine Learning converts speech to text automatically.

These programs can quickly transcribe cloud-based files.

Software for daily horoscopes

Daily and monthly horoscopes will continue to be popular.

Software platforms that can predict forecasts, calculate birth charts, and other astrology resources are good business ideas.

E-learning Programs

Traditional study methods are losing popularity as virtual schools proliferate and physical space shrinks.

Khan Academy online courses are the best way to keep learning.

Online education portals can boost your learning. If you want to start a tech startup, consider creating an e-learning program.

Conclusion

Software is booming. There's never been a better time to start a software development business, with so many people using computers and smartphones. This article lists eight business ideas for 2023. Consider these ideas if you're just starting out or looking to expand.

I recently wrote about getting VCs excited about Marketplace start-ups. SaaS founders became envious!

Understanding how people wire tens of millions is the only Series A hack I recommend.

Few people understand the intellectual process behind investing.

VC is risk management.

Series A-focused VCs must cover two risks.

1. Market risk

You need a large market to cross a threshold beyond which you can build defensibilities. Series A VCs underwrite market risk.

They must see you have reached product-market fit (PMF) in a large total addressable market (TAM).

2. Execution risk

When evaluating your growth engine's blitzscaling ability, execution risk arises.

When investors remove operational uncertainty, they profit.

Series A VCs like businesses with derisked revenue streams. Don't raise unless you have a predictable model, pipeline, and growth.

Please beat these 3 metrics before Series A:

Achieve $1.5m ARR in 12-24 months (Market risk)

Above 100% Net Dollar Retention. (Market danger)

Lead Velocity Rate supporting $10m ARR in 2–4 years (Execution risk)

Hit the 3 and you'll raise $10M in 4 months. Discussing 2/3 may take 6–7 months.

If none, don't bother raising and focus on becoming a capital-efficient business (Topics for other posts).

Let's examine these 3 metrics for the brave ones.

1. Lead Velocity Rate supporting €$10m ARR in 2 to 4 years

Last because it's the least discussed. LVR is the most reliable data when evaluating a growth engine, in my opinion.

SaaS allows you to see the future.

Monthly Sales and Sales Pipelines, two predictive KPIs, have poor data quality. Both are lagging indicators, and minor changes can cause huge modeling differences.

Analysts and Associates will trash your forecasts if they're based only on Monthly Sales and Sales Pipeline.

LVR, defined as month-over-month growth in qualified leads, is rock-solid. There's no lag. You can See The Future if you use Qualified Leads and a consistent formula and process to qualify them.

With this metric in your hand, scaling your company turns into an execution play on which VCs are able to perform calculations risk.

2. Above-100% Net Dollar Retention.

Net Dollar Retention is a better-known SaaS health metric than LVR.

Net Dollar Retention measures a SaaS company's ability to retain and upsell customers. Ask what $1 of net new customer spend will be worth in years n+1, n+2, etc.

Depending on the business model, SaaS businesses can increase their share of customers' wallets by increasing users, selling them more products in SaaS-enabled marketplaces, other add-ons, and renewing them at higher price tiers.

If a SaaS company's annualized Net Dollar Retention is less than 75%, there's a problem with the business.

Slack's ARR chart (below) shows how powerful Net Retention is. Layer chart shows how existing customer revenue grows. Slack's S1 shows 171% Net Dollar Retention for 2017–2019.

Slack S-1

3. $1.5m ARR in the last 12-24 months.

According to Point 9, $0.5m-4m in ARR is needed to raise a $5–12m Series A round.

Target at least what you raised in Pre-Seed/Seed. If you've raised $1.5m since launch, don't raise before $1.5m ARR.

Capital efficiency has returned since Covid19. After raising $2m since inception, it's harder to raise $1m in ARR.

P9's 2016-2021 SaaS Funding Napkin

In summary, less than 1% of companies VCs meet get funded. These metrics can help you win.

If there’s demand for it, I’ll do one on direct-to-consumer.

Cheers!

Y Combinators Winter 2022 Demo Day continues the trend of more startups engaging in accelerator Demo Days. Our team evaluated almost 400 projects in Y Combinator's ninth year.

After Winter 2021 Demo Day, we noticed a hurry pushing shorter rounds, inflated valuations, and larger batches.

Despite the batch size, this event's behavior showed a return to normalcy. Our observations show that investors evaluate and fund businesses more carefully. Unlike previous years, more YC businesses gave investors with data rooms and thorough pitch decks in addition to valuation data before Demo Day.

Demo Day pitches were virtual and fast-paced, limiting unplanned meetings. Investors had more time and information to do their due research before meeting founders. Our staff has more time to study diverse areas and engage with interesting entrepreneurs and founders.

This was one of the most regionally diversified YC cohorts to date. This year's Winter Demo Day startups showed some interesting tendencies.

Trends and Industries to Watch Before Demo Day

Demo day events at any accelerator show how investment competition is influencing startups. As startups swiftly become scale-ups and big success stories in fintech, e-commerce, healthcare, and other competitive industries, entrepreneurs and early-stage investors feel pressure to scale quickly and turn a notion into actual innovation.

Too much eagerness can lead founders to focus on market growth and team experience instead of solid concepts, technical expertise, and market validation. Last year, YC Winter Demo Day funding cycles ended too quickly and valuations were unrealistically high.

Scrum Ventures observed a longer funding cycle this year compared to last year's Demo Day. While that seems promising, many factors could be contributing to change, including:

• Market patterns are changing and the economy is becoming worse.

• the industries that investors are thinking about.

• Individual differences between each event batch and the particular businesses and entrepreneurs taking part

The Winter 2022 Batch's Trends

Each year, we also wish to examine trends among early-stage firms and YC event participants. More international startups than ever were anticipated to present at Demo Day.

Less than 50% of demo day startups were from the U.S. For the S21 batch, firms from outside the US were most likely in Latin America or Europe, however this year's batch saw a large surge in startups situated in Asia and Africa.

YC Startup Directory

163 out of 399 startups were B2B software and services companies. Financial, healthcare, and consumer startups were common.

Our team doesn't plan to attend every pitch or speak with every startup's founders or team members. Let's look at cleantech, Web3, and health and wellness startup trends.

Our Opinions Following Conversations with 87 Startups at Demo Day

In the lead-up to Demo Day, we spoke with 87 of the 125 startups going. Compared to B2C enterprises, B2B startups had higher average valuations. A few outliers with high valuations pushed B2B and B2C means above the YC-wide mean and median.

Many of these startups develop business and technology solutions we've previously covered. We've seen API, EdTech, creative platforms, and cybersecurity remain strong and increase each year.

While these persistent tendencies influenced the startups Scrum Ventures looked at and the founders we interacted with on Demo Day, new trends required more research and preparation. Let's examine cleantech, Web3, and health and wellness startups.

Hardware and software that is green

Cleantech enterprises demand varying amounts of funding for hardware and software. Although the same overarching trend is fueling the growth of firms in this category, each subgroup has its own strategy and technique for investigation and identifying successful investments.

Many cleantech startups we spoke to during the YC event are focused on helping industrial operations decrease or recycle carbon emissions.

• Carbon Crusher: Creating carbon negative roads

• Phase Biolabs: Turning carbon emissions into carbon negative products and carbon neutral e-fuels

• Seabound: Capturing carbon dioxide emissions from ships

• Fleetzero: Creating electric cargo ships

• Impossible Mining: Sustainable seabed mining

• Beyond Aero: Creating zero-emission private aircraft

• Verdn: Helping businesses automatically embed environmental pledges for product and service offerings, boost customer engagement

• AeonCharge: Allowing electric vehicle (EV) drivers to more easily locate and pay for EV charging stations

• Phoenix Hydrogen: Offering a hydrogen marketplace and a connected hydrogen hub platform to connect supply and demand for hydrogen fuel and simplify hub planning and partner program expansion

• Aklimate: Allowing businesses to measure and reduce their supply chain’s environmental impact

• Pina Earth: Certifying and tracking the progress of businesses’ forestry projects

• AirMyne: Developing machines that can reverse emissions by removing carbon dioxide from the air

• Unravel Carbon: Software for enterprises to track and reduce their carbon emissions

Web3: NFTs, the metaverse, and cryptocurrency

Web3 technologies handle a wide range of business issues. This category includes companies employing blockchain technology to disrupt entertainment, finance, cybersecurity, and software development.

Many of these startups overlap with YC's FinTech trend. Despite this, B2C and B2B enterprises were evenly represented in Web3. We examined:

• Stablegains: Offering consistent interest on cash balance from the decentralized finance (DeFi) market

• LiquiFi: Simplifying token management with automated vesting contracts, tax reporting, and scheduling. For companies, investors, and finance & accounting

• NFTScoring: An NFT trading platform

• CypherD Wallet: A multichain wallet for crypto and NFTs with a non-custodial crypto debit card that instantly converts coins to USD

• Remi Labs: Allowing businesses to more easily create NFT collections that serve as access to products, memberships, events, and more

• Cashmere: A crypto wallet for Web3 startups to collaboratively manage funds

• Chaingrep: An API that makes blockchain data human-readable and tokens searchable

• Courtyard: A platform for securely storing physical assets and creating 3D representations as NFTs

• Arda: “Banking as a Service for DeFi,” an API that FinTech companies can use to embed DeFi products into their platforms

• earnJARVIS: A premium cryptocurrency management platform, allowing users to create long-term portfolios

• Mysterious: Creating community-specific experiences for Web3 Discords

• Winter: An embeddable widget that allows businesses to sell NFTs to users purchasing with a credit card or bank transaction

• SimpleHash: An API for NFT data that provides compatibility across blockchains, standardized metadata, accurate transaction info, and simple integration

• Lifecast: Tools that address motion sickness issues for 3D VR video

• Gym Class: Virtual reality (VR) multiplayer basketball video game

• WorldQL: An asset API that allows NFT creators to specify multiple in-game interpretations of their assets, increasing their value

• Bonsai Desk: A software development kit (SDK) for 3D analytics

• Campfire: Supporting virtual social experiences for remote teams

• Unai: A virtual headset and Visual World experience

• Vimmerse: Allowing creators to more easily create immersive 3D experiences

Fitness and health

Scrum Ventures encountered fewer health and wellness startup founders than Web3 and Cleantech. The types of challenges these organizations solve are still diverse. Several of these companies are part of a push toward customization in healthcare, an area of biotech set for growth for companies with strong portfolios and experienced leadership.

Here are several startups we considered:

• Syrona Health: Personalized healthcare for women in the workplace

• Anja Health: Personalized umbilical cord blood banking and stem cell preservation

• Alfie: A weight loss program focused on men’s health that coordinates medical care, coaching, and “community-based competition” to help users lose an average of 15% body weight

• Ankr Health: An artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled telehealth platform that provides personalized side effect education for cancer patients and data collection for their care teams

• Koko — A personalized sleep program to improve at-home sleep analysis and training

• Condition-specific telehealth platforms and programs:

• Reviving Mind: Chronic care management covered by insurance and supporting holistic, community-oriented health care

• Equipt Health: At-home delivery of prescription medical equipment to help manage chronic conditions like obstructive sleep apnea

• LunaJoy: Holistic women’s healthcare management for mental health therapy, counseling, and medication

12 Startups from YC's Winter 2022 Demo Day to Watch

Bobidi: 10x faster AI model improvement

Artificial intelligence (AI) models have become a significant tool for firms to improve how well and rapidly they process data. Bobidi helps AI-reliant firms evaluate their models, boosting data insights in less time and reducing data analysis expenditures. The business has created a gamified community that offers a bug bounty for AI, incentivizing community members to test and find weaknesses in clients' AI models.

Magna: DeFi investment management and token vesting

Magna delivers rapid, secure token vesting so consumers may turn DeFi investments into primitives. Carta for Web3 allows enterprises to effortlessly distribute tokens to staff or investors. The Magna team hopes to allow corporations use locked tokens as collateral for loans, facilitate secondary liquidity so investors can sell shares on a public exchange, and power additional DeFi applications.

Perl Street: Funding for infrastructure

This Fintech firm intends to help hardware entrepreneurs get financing by [democratizing] structured finance, unleashing billions for sustainable infrastructure and next-generation hardware solutions. This network has helped hardware entrepreneurs achieve more than $140 million in finance, helping companies working on energy storage devices, EVs, and creating power infrastructure.

CypherD: Multichain cryptocurrency wallet

CypherD seeks to provide a multichain crypto wallet so general customers can explore Web3 products without knowledge hurdles. The startup's beta app lets consumers access crypto from EVM blockchains. The founders have crypto, financial, and startup experience.

Unravel Carbon: Enterprise carbon tracking and offsetting

Unravel Carbon's AI-powered decarbonization technology tracks companies' carbon emissions. Singapore-based startup focuses on Asia. The software can use any company's financial data to trace the supply chain and calculate carbon tracking, which is used to make regulatory disclosures and suggest carbon offsets.

LunaJoy: Precision mental health for women

LunaJoy helped women obtain mental health support throughout life. The platform combines data science to create a tailored experience, allowing women to access psychotherapy, medication management, genetic testing, and health coaching.

Posh: Automated EV battery recycling

Posh attempts to solve one of the EV industry's largest logistical difficulties. Millions of EV batteries will need to be decommissioned in the next decade, and their precious metals and residual capacity will go unused for some time. Posh offers automated, scalable lithium battery disassembly, making EV battery recycling more viable.

Unai: VR headset with 5x higher resolution

Unai stands apart from metaverse companies. Its VR headgear has five times the resolution of existing options and emphasizes human expression and interaction in a remote world. Maxim Perumal's method of latency reduction powers current VR headsets.

Palitronica: Physical infrastructure cybersecurity

Palitronica blends cutting-edge hardware and software to produce networked electronic systems that support crucial physical and supply chain infrastructure. The startup's objective is to build solutions that defend national security and key infrastructure from cybersecurity threats.

Reality Defender: Deepfake detection

Reality Defender alerts firms to bogus users and changed audio, video, and image files. Reality Deference's API and web app score material in real time to prevent fraud, improve content moderation, and detect deception.

Micro Meat: Infrastructure for the manufacture of cell-cultured meat

MicroMeat promotes sustainable meat production. The company has created technologies to scale up bioreactor-grown meat muscle tissue from animal cells. Their goal is to scale up cultured meat manufacturing so cultivated meat products can be brought to market feasibly and swiftly, boosting worldwide meat consumption.

Fleetzero: Electric cargo ships

This startup's battery technology will make cargo ships more sustainable and profitable. Fleetzero's electric cargo ships have five times larger profit margins than fossil fuel ships. Fleetzeros' founder has marine engineering, ship operations, and enterprise sales and business experience.

James Howells lost 8,000 bitcoins. He has $11 million to get them back.

His life altered when he threw out an iPhone-sized hard drive.

Howells, from the city of Newport in southern Wales, had two identical laptop hard drives squirreled away in a drawer in 2013. One was blank; the other had 8,000 bitcoins, currently worth around $181 million.

He wanted to toss out the blank one, but the drive containing the Bitcoin went to the dump.

He's determined to reclaim his 2009 stash.

Howells, 36, wants to arrange a high-tech treasure hunt for bitcoins. He can't enter the landfill.

Newport's city council has rebuffed Howells' requests to dig for his hard drive for almost a decade, stating it would be expensive and environmentally destructive.

I got an early look at his $11 million idea to search 110,000 tons of trash. He expects submitting it to the council would convince it to let him recover the hard disk.

110,000 tons of trash, 1 hard drive

Finding a hard disk among heaps of trash may seem Herculean.

Former IT worker Howells claims it's possible with human sorters, robot dogs, and an AI-powered computer taught to find hard drives on a conveyor belt.

His idea has two versions, depending on how much of the landfill he can search.

His most elaborate solution would take three years and cost $11 million to sort 100,000 metric tons of waste. Scaled-down version costs $6 million and takes 18 months.

He's created a team of eight professionals in AI-powered sorting, landfill excavation, garbage management, and data extraction, including one who recovered Columbia's black box data.

The specialists and their companies would be paid a bonus if they successfully recovered the bitcoin stash.

Howells: "We're trying to commercialize this project."

Howells claimed rubbish would be dug up by machines and sorted near the landfill.

Human pickers and a Max-AI machine would sort it. The machine resembles a scanner on a conveyor belt.

Remi Le Grand of Max-AI told us it will train AI to recognize Howells-like hard drives. A robot arm would select candidates.

Howells has added security charges to his scheme because he fears people would steal the hard drive.

He's budgeted for 24-hour CCTV cameras and two robotic "Spot" canines from Boston Dynamics that would patrol at night and look for his hard drive by day.

Howells said his crew met in May at the Celtic Manor Resort outside Newport for a pitch rehearsal.

Richard Hammond's narrative swings from banal to epic.

Richard Hammond filmed the meeting and created a YouTube documentary on Howells.

Hammond said of Howells' squad, "They're committed and believe in him and the idea."

Hammond: "It goes from banal to gigantic." "If I were in his position, I wouldn't have the strength to answer the door."

Howells said trash would be cleaned and repurposed after excavation. Reburying the rest.

"We won't pollute," he declared. "We aim to make everything better."

After the project is finished, he hopes to develop a solar or wind farm on the dump site. The council is unlikely to accept his vision soon.

A council representative told us, "Mr. Howells can't convince us of anything." "His suggestions constitute a significant ecological danger, which we can't tolerate and are forbidden by our permit."

Will the recovered hard drive work?

The "platter" is a glass or metal disc that holds the hard drive's data. Howells estimates 80% to 90% of the data will be recoverable if the platter isn't damaged.

Phil Bridge, a data-recovery expert who consulted Howells, confirmed these numbers.

If the platter is broken, Bridge adds, data recovery is unlikely.

Bridge says he was intrigued by the proposal. "It's an intriguing case," he added. Helping him get it back and proving everyone incorrect would be a great success story.

Who'd pay?

Swiss and German venture investors Hanspeter Jaberg and Karl Wendeborn told us they would fund the project if Howells received council permission.

Jaberg: "It's a needle in a haystack and a high-risk investment."

Howells said he had no contract with potential backers but had discussed the proposal in Zoom meetings. "Until Newport City Council gives me something in writing, I can't commit," he added.

Suppose he finds the bitcoins.

Howells said he would keep 30% of the data, worth $54 million, if he could retrieve it.

A third would go to the recovery team, 30% to investors, and the remainder to local purposes, including gifting £50 ($61) in bitcoin to each of Newport's 150,000 citizens.

Howells said he opted to spend extra money on "professional firms" to help convince the council.

What if the council doesn't approve?

If Howells can't win the council's support, he'll sue, claiming its actions constitute a "illegal embargo" on the hard drive. "I've avoided that path because I didn't want to cause complications," he stated. I wanted to cooperate with Newport's council.

Howells never met with the council face-to-face. He mentioned he had a 20-minute Zoom meeting in May 2021 but thought his new business strategy would help.

He met with Jessica Morden on June 24. Morden's office confirmed meeting.

After telling the council about his proposal, he can only wait. "I've never been happier," he said. This is our most professional operation, with the best employees.

The "crypto proponent" buys bitcoin every month and sells it for cash.

Howells tries not to think about what he'd do with his part of the money if the hard disk is found functional. "Otherwise, you'll go mad," he added.

This post is a summary. Read the full article here.