Since the past 5 years, we have seen a seesaw where startups on one side and a bigger company on the other side. Every now and then, one side dominates the other.
2017 – The year of the bigger companies
It was a slightly tough year for startups, with many of them dying or being acquired real cheap. The reason for this was a fairly loose angel investment/seed/pre seed process leading them to not being able to raise more money (round A). This was very evident from the deals that happened around 2015/2016.
2018 – The dust settles
Now funds are being raised or being given to actual value creators and well defined business models. All sectors now have 1-3 big competitive players left (e-commerce, food tech etc).
One thing that needs to be kept in mind is the team as well as the founders. Do some due diligence regarding these members before taking the plunge. I am very bullish on the startups and some very early stage startups doing some good tech work (not market places, food delivery, aggregation etc).