Earlier this Summer, The Wall Street Journal reported that venture capitalists are starting to see a new market open up for which to invest their money – that being the online privacy industry. As more and more data leaks continue to permeate the financial, healthcare, and legal landscape (to name a few), VC firms have made a shift in how they view investment opportunity in the online privacy world. Pui-Wing Tam reported that "[t]he jump in privacy-related investments underscores how ways to protect piravcy on the Web and on mobile gadgets is increasingly viewed as a real business." Tam’s article goes on to say that "[m]any venture capitalists liken today’s privacy market to the technology-security market a decade ago, when companies such as Barracuda Networks, Inc., were searching for solutions to deal with viruses and hacking." The challenge for the businesses and the venture capitalists, however, is getting people and businesses to pay for their services, and ultimately what affects the bottom-line is what VC firms are really looking at when investing in start-up enterprises.
