11 Startup Ideas We Want to Fund

This post originally appeared on the 2048 Ventures Blog.

A collection of mini theses that we have been thinking about.

At 2048 Ventures, we are obsessed with imagining the future and predicting how the world will change in 5-10 years, enabled by nascent infrastructure and data-based technologies. We are actively looking for companies building into this future. In the past months, we have discussed several specific ideas based on where we believe the world is heading.

We are excited to share these now, outlining the startup ideas that we are seeking to fund. This is an active request for founders working in any of these areas to reach out or to share your materials to 2048.vc/pitch-us. Watch for these to be updated quarterly.

You can follow our longer thesis collection here.

Deep Tech Infrastructure

Next-Generation Drone Inspection and Monitoring

• We seek solutions that leverage drones to capture data from and/or monitor critical assets autonomously.
• These companies would leverage advances in drone autonomy and loosening restrictions around beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) to perform more frequent, detailed, and cost-effective monitoring of sites.
• Ideal platforms would also own the downstream data processing and workflows to be a fully vertically integrated solution.

Drone Communication Infrastructure

• We seek next-gen drone operating systems which improve the resiliency and reliability of autonomous multi-drone systems or environments.
• These platforms would enable complex communication and coordination between drones in situations where human decision making is not needed or not possible.
• The drone infrastructure market is $900M today and growing to $16B by 2030, representing a quickly growing and exciting market opportunity.

Real-Time IoT Sensor Innovations

• We seek companies developing low-cost sensors for real-time data monitoring.
• We are agnostic on exact market but have seen success in quality control and compliance spaces through our investments with H2Ok Innovations and Pathspot. We also see clear applications in the manufacturing space.
• Commodity or low-cost sensors are a fantastic trojan horse to capture data. Additional SaaS products can be built on top of these databases, adding value through dynamic measurements of parameters that facilitate real-time alerts or compliance procedures.

B2B Platforms

Wealth Management Software for HNW Individuals

• We seek software solutions for next-gen family offices and HNWI.
• Family offices increased from 6,130 in 2019 to 8,030 today, with an expected 10,720 expected by 2030. These offices are increasingly tech-focused, with an interest in portfolio diversification, including direct investments.
• Platforms would enable customers to manage multiple asset classes, and make recommendations based on long-term goals.

Scam Detection for Individuals and Businesses

• We seek software solutions that protect individuals and businesses from online-based scams and social engineering-based attacks.
• Platforms would enable users to quickly determine if content was legitimate and, if impacted, immediately perform next best steps to mitigate economic damage from an attack.
• The need is driven in part by advancements in gen AI that facilitate fraud and other malicious activities that have resulted in a quickly expanding global fraud detection market.

Health

Apps for Chronic Care Management

• We seek an integrated care management platform for patients with chronic conditions.
• The platform should integrate medical, lifestyle, biometric, and environmental factors to help patients optimally prevent or manage chronic conditions such headache, respiratory conditions, hormone diseases, neurodegeneration.
• We are open to business models that integrate with healthcare systems and clinics or go direct-to-consumer to expand patient care.
• See our longer thesis here

Healthcare Security Surveillance

• We seek next-generation security and compliance platforms for healthcare.
• Massive security breaches shine light on the need for innovation. Even state attorneys general have sounded the alarm since the Change Healthcare and other breaches.
• We see immense potential for software to surveil and protect patient data, prevent cyber attacks, and streamline compliance and regulatory requirements for health systems, practices, digital health, and connected devices.

Healthcare Financial Intelligence

• We seek innovations in healthcare financial infrastructure: new payment rails, revenue intelligence, and recovery.
• Specifically we are looking for approaches with deep understandings and capture of existing workflows, with AI applications to ultimately re-invent and automate them.
• The market is ripe for disruption with fragmented solutions across the continuum between health systems, small practices, digital health companies, payers, and the third-parties between them.
• As a result, we see an opportunity to replace manual, outsourced and error-prone workflows with precision and automation. We are excited about the potential for innovation in healthcare payments to reduce inefficiencies and shift the industry towards value-based models.

Tech Bio

Biobank Infrastructure

• We seek a next-gen operating system tailored for bio-repositories that embraces a data-centric approach and integrates advanced analytics
• An ideal product supports emerging types of biological information, ensures easy sample tracking, and guarantees security and authenticity
• Biobanking is a growing market and we believe a strong biobanking infrastructure holds immense potential to supercharge collaboration, research, and transparency
• See our longer thesis here

Biomarkers for Mental Health

• We seek innovations in mental illness to push the frontier of the field toward more objective, quantifiable, and specific biomarkers for mental health
• An ideal platform includes blood- or saliva-based biomarkers based on sample accessibility and current testing infrastructure
• We believe multiple solutions are needed to transform the way patients are diagnosed, monitored, and treated for the the 1 in 20 U.S. adults suffering serious mental illness or the 16.5% of youth who experience mental health disorders

‘Omics Infrastructure Tools

• We seek analysis tools for large ‘omics datasets. The core innovation is tied to software and will likely include novel chemistry or biology.
• We are bullish on many datasets but are especially interested in finding applications in the microbiome, proteomics, and immunology spaces.
• We think a service model can optimize for data capture, and provides long-tail value through additional analytics software.