Nanotech investment stats: From a story in may 2004: "The National Science Foundation projects the entire market could be worth $1 trillion by 2016. That's a huge and almost entirely new market, but also well past the 10-year venture capital fund investment horizon.  Worse, still, for VCs hoping to exit profitably from the nanotech startups accumulating in their portfolios: Major corporations worldwide are working feverishly to apply nanotechnology to specific products and services, giving many, at least theoretically, a serious leg up on startups with far less capital and far fewer real products upon which to test their new nanowares.  More than 700 companies are collectively spending about $3 billion on nanotechnology research and development this year alone, according to Lux Capital, with only a handful of them venture capital-backed startups."  2:14:48 PM