10 Booming Industries You Should Watch For

What is the most promising industry or niche to start up in now and why?

Startup founder in FinTech booming sector

The following answers are provided by members of Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization comprised of the world’s most promising young entrepreneurs. In partnership with Citi, YEC recently launched BusinessCollective, a free virtual mentorship program that helps millions of entrepreneurs start and grow businesses.

1. Amazon FBA

In the last few years, we’ve seen lots of entrepreneurs leverage the power of Amazon to create successful brands through private labeling and utilizing fulfilment by Amazon. There are still many product opportunities available for new entrepreneurs to explore and we will continue to hear more success stories in 2016.

Thomas Smale, FE International

2. Private Label Health Supplements

Everyone is health-conscious these days, and there are several private label supplement manufacturers that will even warehouse and ship your product. The trouble with this industry in the past was the small margins and cost to store/sell — whether warehousing or having a physical office location. Affordable private label manufacturing plus the power of social media influencers creates a huge opportunity.

Jonathan Long, Market Domination Media

3. Fintech

The fintech space is hot right now, with tons of companies going public and many headed there as well. It’s not as risky of a business, and it’s something that everyone needs and will need in the future. Unlike other industries that are heavily regulated and take a long time to pass, the financial industry already has regulations and big players pushing advancements. This allows the little guys in.

John Rampton, Due

4. Crowdfunding

The door has been opened for tens of millions of new American entrepreneurs to unleash their brilliance through crowdfunding. You can create a crowdfunding portal or service the pains of existing crowdfunding portals. Or, try servicing the entrepreneurs getting involved with crowdfunding. This is the future of finance and the opportunities are endless.

– Ken Cauley, Advanced Media

5. Blockchain

Bitcoin using blockchain technology
photo credit: BTC Keychain / Flickr

Bitcoin is huge. But very often, we hear that leading investment banks and financial organizations are more interested in the underlying blockchain technology –- the distributed ledger system, rather than the currency. A huge amount of startups are being built in the blockchain world to tap into this revolutionary technology.

Ben Lang, Mapme

6. Education

We’ve seen how massive open online courses (MOOCs) have made learning more accessible (not just convenient) through platforms like Coursera, edX, Udacy and more. Now the next level is for institutions to integrate more consumer technology into how they already do things. It will be interesting to see how students will interact with, gather and access information as time goes by.

Cody McLain, SupportNinja

7. Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is gaining more momentum and customers are willing to pay a high price for the virtual reality experience. Technology to create virtual reality products has become simpler, and open source cost is going down. Competition is very low in this space and it is going to grow over the next five years, similar to the mobile app industry in 2010. It’s the right time to start if you have the right idea.

Piyush Jain, SIMpalm

8. Learning Services With Integrated Gamification

There are already countless technology startups that are achieving great success developing learning tools, providing feedback by giving users points, badges and other incentives to keep them invested. Technology seems to be the biggest segment of the market, yet there is so much potential to delve into other areas of interest, like languages, the arts and even traditional curriculums.

Blair Thomas, EMerchantBroker

9. Agricultural Software

There’s a huge wealth of data waiting to be collected from farmers, and companies that can help them process it and find new ways to be profitable will reap huge profits. Farm equipment comes standard with sensors, but farmers need software to make sense of the data. From weather pattern detection to integration with prices and futures, there are untapped possibilities everywhere in AgTech.

Dave Nevogt, Hubstaff.com

10. Quantifiable Tools

In the midst of IoT, wearables, AI and sensors, we are getting into the era where we can quantify ourselves whether it is lifestyle, food, nutrition or health. Software and hardware innovation that help simplify (in terms of usage) the quantification and bring this innovation to masses would be the most powerful tools for consumers as well as businesses.

Shilpi Sharma, Kvantum Inc.