UK Technology Startups

I wrote a fair amount last year about the difficulty of encouraging VCs to invest in greener technologies.

Is a boom in Chinese start-ups creating a bubble of dotcom-disaster proportions? An interesting article has been posted by the US website Salt Lake Tribune on Chinese start-ups and over-valuations that are taking place there.

More on green design, I’m afraid. An article in the FT today paints a picture of hybrid venture capitalists, who have been ‘greened’ by hanging out with the detritus of California’s beatnik/hippy culture in funky cafes.

We’ve all heard of Silicon Valley but have entrepreneurs in the US heard of Cambridge and its spewing forth of start-ups?

I feel worried about what I can bring into being next. Having joked about ‘start-up island’ yesterday, low and behold the BBC today says it is in fact Mauritius.

Could it be the first electronics funding deal of 2008? An Edinburgh-based start-up has just received £2m of investment from VC firm Braveheart, the Siemens Technology Accelerator and the Scottish Venture Fund.

An industry thrives on the edges of the normal start-up business, these are neither VCs nor entrepreneurs.

Apparently techies are unhealthy. BUPA has released a report today which says the technology and IT sector has “an unappetising set of diet and lifestyle statistics”.

A lot of money has been spent on technology parks around the UK, the latest to be announced is the £8.2m Thames Innovation Centre in Erith.

Richard Irving, a partner at venture capital firm Pond Venture Partners, ponders how the Silicon Valley chip investors interpret the year ahead

As we enter 2008, the chip industry hopes for continued consumer demand, since this has become the source of most of its growth prospects. Much of this comes from the US, whose economy now faces a credit crisis, election year uncertainty and more.

UK start-up AdvanceSis has managed to raise follow on funding from Seven Spires Investments to finance a three year business plan for expansion of its technology and business development resources in the UK and mainland Europe.

You can fiddle with statistics to make them say what you want and now the Government has been accused of fiddling business start-up figures.

How much public money has gone into backing technology firms and is it well spent? I currently have an enquiry pending with the National Audit Office about this and whether they look at SMART and Faraday-type grants to assess the value of such investments.