Simon Calder, CEO of Cambridge Mechatronics, talks to Electronics Weekly about the place of semiconductor start-ups in the UK, the absence of a high-tech skills shortage, and how to encourage students to consider careers in electronics design.

Describe in two sentences the company business model.

The company is a licensor of electronic actuator intellectual property (IP). Our current IP offering includes low cost single-box 5.1 surround sound solution based on phased actuator arrays, small actuators based on Shaped Memory Alloy (SMA) and low energy actuators based on a Super Helix of PZT.

What makes the UK a suitable location for a semiconductor start-up?

At the most prosaic level, the income tax regime in the UK is still competitive, especially for entrepreneurs and employees of start-ups.

More importantly the UK has a disproportionate number of world-class technical problem solvers.
I think people in the UK worry too much about the location of manufacturing and factories. Take for example, our mobile phone camera auto-focus actuators. They will end up being built in robot-filled factories in Japan or Korea. Our royalty per unit (which comes back to Cambridge) will be roughly equivalent to the profit made by the manufacturer who made it. 

Ultimately I believe that IP licensing model will generate more profits and create more UK jobs than any manufacturing based model.

There is much talk of a shortage of high-tech skills in the UK, what is your experience of this?

I have been amazed at how easy it has been to find truly remarkable engineers and scientists. Not only are they very clever, they have an abundance of entrepreneurial energy and drive. It has also been relatively straightforward to find highly competent professional engineers and technicians that actually do the bulk of any development.

My biggest complaint about skills in the UK high-tech would be in the area of sales and marketing. There are not enough people in the UK that have the combination of technical knowledge, global market perspective and formal training or experience in product definition and promotion.

What gives you the biggest buzz from creating a start-up company?

You can create new products and markets from inside big companies; if we are honest the majority of new ideas still come from within existing enterprises. The thrill of a start-up for someone like me is more to do with the ability to define the culture in which you operate. How you treat employees and colleagues, how you relate with customers and partners and how you interact with the environment for example.

The other great thing about a start-up is that the employees tend to have a much larger ownership of the company. This means that they are incentivised to continually think of new ideas and contribute them to their company.

What would you say to students to encourage them to consider careers in electronics design?

Speaking from personal experience, the maths, chemistry, and physics at A Level and engineering undergraduate level always felt to me somewhat irrelevant and arcane, detached form the real world. How wrong that impression was.

It is when all those maths and science skills are combined to invent something that has never been done before that an engineering career becomes truly and exciting and rewarding. Our R&D team have more than 50 patents between them, with another 70 in the pipeline. Each patent is a little piece of immortality for its contributors. I can't think of another career that offers such opportunity.
 
See also: Q5 - Interviews with electronics industry leaders
Read all the Electronics Weekly Q5 interviews. From ARM's chairman, Sir Robin Saxby, to touchscreen technology firm Zytronic's MD, Mark Cambridge, the business leaders share their particular insights on the UK electronics industry.

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