If you put together under-utilised engineers, a shrinking semiconductor sector and pro-active venture capitalists, you get start-up companies, and this seems to be the brew which is being stirred in Japan.
The VC guys are very interested. Moriyoshi Nakashima, CEO of flash memory start-up Genusion, tells me he's turned down loads of VC offers including ones from Intel Capital, from JAFCO, Japan's leading venture capital company, and from ENOVA, Japan's newest high-tech venture fund.
"Three years ago JAFCO came to us and offered me money, I didn't accept it", says Nakashima, "ENOVA offered the money, I turned it down. Intel Capital also came to me."
Nakashima is picky about who he accepts as a VC because he has an unusual concept of the ideal VC. "I want a gentle VC. I don't want an aggressive VC."
What Nakashima means by a gentle VC is pretty much what all entrepreneurs want in a VC, an investor which doesn't insist on financial control.
Nakashima and his staff still have 85 per cent of Genusion but they need $20m to get a 1Gbit NOR flash chip into sampling mode i.e. a couple of thousand chips made on a 70nm process.
So, the day I met Nakashima, he was off to dinner with guys from a trading company who, he hoped, would be interested in investing without requiring too much equity.
So far, he's given away 15 per cent of the company in return for $7m of A and B series funding.
Nakashima's got a superior technology which can address the NAND market as well as the NOR.
Furthermore he's got a track record, as the guy at Mitsubishi who took the flash business from a heavily loss-making $100 million turnover operation to a billion dollar business.
He wants to show he can do it again.
Great point and very interesting food for thought. I'm not sure I have any clients I can replicate this with, but will bear in mind for the future. Regards
Thanks Jessica, it looks as there's going to be a big opportunity for VC-backed start-ups in Japan with the proposed merger of NEC and Renesas - with their heavily overlapping product lines - which probably means that a lot of Japanese engineers will be looking for something else to do - though whether their mind-set can accept the terms on which VCs usually operate is problematical.