I read the news that Deepstream Technologies had finally called in the administrators at the behest of some of its creditors with great saddness and some anger.
If there ever was a case for government money being used to rescue a cash-strapped high-tech start-up with much potential, this is it.
There aren't many companies trying to do that right now as the lure of low labour costs in Asia appear too strong for many.
But Deepstream is different and it probably would have succeeded in its own right had it not been trying to grow a business in 2008/2009 when the the global economy went into free fall.
But the plans of Deepstream, which already has a major contract for its 3D sensor technology, should not be allowed to fail.
So the government should be persuaded that saving Deepstream and the 80 or so highly skill manufacturing staff it employs is a sensible thing to do in the present climate.
And the money is there. The last Budget outlined around £1bn available to invest in technology companies.
The fate of Deepstream will perhaps give us an indication of how serious the Government is about maintaining thw UK's high tech skills base.
Becasue if it was serious, then spending a few million bailing out Deepstream would be a no-brainer.
I agree. Especially after the Welsh Government used Deepstream as a glowing example of the business it would support. As owner of an SME directly affected, I was guided entirely in my decisions to grant Deepstream credit by the very public announcements of support from the Welsh government.
It is now this same government that must step in and not only support Deepstream, but also the underlying support infrastructure that supported Deepstream to the end who now hold sizeable 'bad' debts as a result.
Stuart