If government were to pay the first two years’ costs of
employing IET and IEEE qualified engineers in this country, the
output of the UK electronics industry, and the value of the UK
electronics industry in the eyes of venture capital investors,
would both double overnight, according to Stan Boland, CEO of
wireless start-up Icera Semiconductor.
Boland was on a panel talking at the third meeting of The
North-West Technology
Network, the recently founded initiative to
kick-start a Bristol or Cambridge style high-tech cluster in the
North-West. The third meeting had a record attendance and an
intensive debate.
“If the government pays the full cost for two years it would double
the effort the UK could put into electronics, and double the value
which VCs put on the electronics industry," said Boland who
reckons: “The government is thinking outside the box on these
things.”
Boland’s fellow panelist, James Foster, CEO of start-up XMOS
Semiconductor, agreed with him. “I agree in the next three to four
months there’s going to be a big change. NESTA for one. There’s a
big lump of cash there.”
The government is also, apparently, considering the idea of a
‘Fund of Funds’ with one or two billion pounds in funding to be
made available to venture capitalists to seed some start-ups.
And apparently the European Investment Bank has half a billion
Euros to put into the North-West region to fund the technology
industry, though it is not clear how much of this is already
allocated, and how much is available for start-up activity.
With all this potential funding, Foster urged the meeting to look
at start-ups. He quoted a recent study which showed that, at the
moment, there’s more job security in a start-up than in a big
company.
“If you’re more secure in a start-up, if money is available, if
there’s a centre available, what’s the catch?” he asked.
So a key question for the North-West with its wealth of scientific
brain-power is: ‘Are the rich pools of talent not being
leveraged?’
John Bainbridge, CTO of Manchester start-up Silistix, said that the
toughest part of his start up process was getting introductions to
VCs. This seems outrageous for a region with such a distinguished
technological history.
Professor Steve Furber, Professor of Computer Science at Manchester
University said: “The university finds people who can do business
development work. If a company flies, the university supports
it.”
Stan Boland, who has probably raised more VC money for a
semiconductor start-up ($230m) than anyone else in the industry’s
history, added: “It is important to either have an existing link to
VCs so that they trust you, or to link into VCs via a trusted third
party who has pre-vetted the pitch. This is very key. If you hit
the wrong note on the first slide you’ve probably lost the
pitch.”
Boland added that all four of Icera’s founders had existing links
to VCs when they founded the company.
Not entirely altruistically perhaps, Boland suggested that a way to
boost high technology in the North-West would be to: “Go to the top
four or five early stage engineering companies in the UK and help
them set up a design centre in Manchester.”
James Foster concurred, pointing out: “If you’re setting up in
Singapore,” he said, “you’d get 50% of it paid for.”
Foster also mentioned a key catalyst to the vitality of the Bristol
cluster: “One magical element is that everyone can get to a pub
without too much trouble – out of hours meetings are very
important.”
With this, Europe’s leading semiconductor analyst, Malcolm Penn,
CEO of Future Horizons, heartily concurred. “Silicon Valley was
built around the Wagon Wheel. Engineers could go there and say:
‘We’ve run into this problem’ and someone would say ‘Yes we’ve had
that problem and this is what we did about it.” It’s an important
part of the equation.”
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