Mannerisms

If you're a would-be UK high-tech entrepreneur, following in the distinguished footsteps of ARM, Virata, CSR, Alphamosaic, Element 14, Clearspeed and many others, it's extremely important to get a good high-tech venture capitalist backer.

Some will try and diddle you. Some will try to get you to diddle the staff. Some will give you enough money to fail. Some will tie you up with onerous conditions.

So how do you choose a good one? Now we have Gardner’s Law of VC-Spotting to help out.

It’s extraordinarily simple to pick a good VC, according to Peter Gardner, technology sector head for wireless communications at 3i, the venture capital house.

Always, says Gardner, pick a VC whose name begins with A. That’s it. That’s Gardner’s Law of VC-Spotting.

He instanced: Atlas, Advent, Apax, Accel, and Amadeus as among first-rate examples of VCs whose names begin with A.