The Four Horsemen: Mobile + Cloud + Data + Design

**Originally published 8/4/2013

The new paradigm is upon us. Just as social media is no longer an investment trend but now an essential tool in every business, so goes the new four horsemen of software startups: mobile + cloud + data + design.

No reason to wax poetic about each area. They are essential components of every startup today. Amazingly, we are still in the early innings for global companies to unleash these new horsemen into their products.

One year ago the world didn’t believe you could make money on mobile but our dashboard of platform investments was showing us you could. I guess Facebook’s recent 2Q earnings finally silenced those critics.

We preach iteration, so here at Promus Ventures we are constantly testing our software thesis and outlook. It’s incredible just how ubiquitous these four areas have now become in every startup we are privileged to meet with. In fact, every one of our platform companies hits these four areas hard, and without these they could not run anywhere near the speed they are moving now.

How did life ever exist without an always-on cross-platform product, utilizing elegant UX/UI and the cloud for quick retrieval and storage of data that collectively creates incredible consumer and industry insights? There are new horsemen coming, but for now mobile + cloud + data + design are not investment trends — they are reality.

Better have it.