Best Industries in Recession - Inc.com suggestions

Those clever guys at Inc.com pushed out a great little thought provoking piece titled
The Best Industries for Starting a Business Right Now.

So I thought it would be useful to list them and offer a few comments:

#1 Candy - industry grew 3.7% - think niche and value, be remarkable

#2 iPhone Apps - 30,000 apps to date - keep the day job, 95% of these apps will not make money for the developer

#3 Health-Care Technology - $19Bn pledged in the stimulus bill for health-information tracking systems - Great part of the software space, but be clear on your business result and the customer you are trying to impress

#4 Beer, wine wholesale - export of American whiskey grew 8% last year - stay close to the value argument, still very price sensitive

#5 Software as a Service - software as a sector expected to grow at around 5% but SaaS potentially at much higher levels - the on demand, subscription model is very compelling for buyers but vendors need to be crystal clear on their business model

#6 Home Health Care - demographics on your side -the key is choosing a niche you can dominate

#7 Yoga Products & Services - staggering to think Americans spent $5.7Bn on yoga stuff in 2008 - think about what has not been done in this industry

#8 Technical & Trade Schools - plenty of potential candidates - think about repeat business and revenue model carefully

#9 Fast- Casual Dining - Panera Bread grew 16% last year - see my twitter ref to food trucks

#10 Green Construction -green building space taking off - perhaps a good time to train your staff on the issues affecting this sector to get ahead of the curve

#11 Niche Consulting - saving money, pr damage control mentioned - it will take much longer than you think to build a brand - allow 9 months for your first client

#12 Education Technology - US still emerging market - great opportunities for hardware and software but again you will need to be remarkable and niche to stand out

#13 Temp Staffing Firms - in theory yes - but in practice, we need to be much closer to recovery to see this industry pick up - long term the trend of senior temp execs will be big in the US like Europe

#14 Government Services - Huge growth stats being thrown off this sector - invest in quality RFP and documentation preparers

#15 Accounting Services - cash flow management driving growth - great opportunity for regional practices to steal market share. The public are very cynical of the big brands

#16 Repair Services - if it's worth repairing why buy a new one -quality of service will separate the winners from the losers

#17 Self Improvement - historically seen strong growth - pricing of these products and services will be key, need to show remarkable value

#18 Energy - fastest growing sector of the Inc 500 -watch the divergence between investor appetite and entrepreneurial passion, bootstrap for as long as you can

Good luck!