Good to meet Emmanuel Carraud, joint founder of MagicSolver.com and talk about working together on the Equity Fingerprint Augmented Graphic Novel. Emmanuel is so inspiring.
But will he keep up with Shamus Husheer of fertility monitor DuoFertillity? I phoned Shamus to check the rumour was true. Yes he had taken his holiday/vacation at CES in Las Vagas and enjoyed the hospitality of the strip. More parties than a “regular” holiday and all on someone else’s expenses, I guess. Now that is what I call a dedicated entrepreneur! Perhaps next year I should attend but not sure if I could keep up with the social life – I had better get training!
Two inspiring Cambridge Cluster entrepreneurs and hears hoping they make it to the big time. Cheers!
Cambridge Cluster voice expert Tony Robinson was drafted in to bail out Spinvox’s technical problems but to no avail. The Daily Telegraph reports that the announcement of the £64million sale of Spinvox was all spin and went to repay short term loans. The founders and early investors shared £600 each and the hard working staff found their shares and options worthless. Let us hope they can find better rewards with the purchaser, US rival Nuance Technology. It would be interesting to know why Nuance bailed out the short-term loan holders.
People talk about entrepreneurship being in the genes but not this time. Christina Domecq, scion of the Domecq sherry dynasty, and Daniel Doulton, a descendant of the Royal Doulton pottery family “will receive nothing for their shares”. All that hard work is just experience for the next venture. Wish business plan resource will they use for their next venture? And best wishes to the ever youthful and dashing Tony Robinson.
Hat tip: DT
Think you are an inventor? Try this…
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Which business plan resource will he use?
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
When Professors Richard Friend and Henning Sirringhaus established(?) the science behind Plastic Logic’s technology and with Stuart Evans spun the company out of Cambridge University in 2000 who would have thought that nine years later they would launch a product into a crowded market. The Que ebook reader launched yesterday at the Consumer Electronics Show is competing in a ferociously competitive market currently dominated by Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader. Yesterday Samsung joined the party and according to the DT “a host of other companies including Indian start-up Notion Ink, are expected to use the trade fair to launch rival products”. The main beneficiary of this high growth market is another Cambridge Cluster company, ARM, as most of the devices run on its smartphone chip designs.
The one unique selling point of the Cue is that the Plastic Logic technology does not require a glass screen which is heavy and breakable. But this does not allow a cheaper price and Apple’s rumoured iSlate is “guaranteed” to have a better comprehensive catalogue and an intuitive interface to browse and download titles from the hyped iStore.
How I hope that the Apple iSlate uses the Plastic Logic screen and an ARM chip with a sticker “Cambridge Cluster Core, trademark (c)” on the front – then the buying decision will be simple. But will I need my iPhone as well or do I go back to a simple phone and use the iSlate on wi-fi? I have 3G turned off to save battery power and because I am usually in a wi-fi environment. Will I need to sleep outside a shop in the Cambridge Cluster to be first in the Queue for a Cue?
It just goes to show that the even using the best business plan resource to work out the funding of Plastic Logic, you need to back an academic who can make the switch to marketing and driving the business forward. But turning academics into marketing and product people is perhaps asking one person to have a talent too much.
PS Zemanta still has not picked out any pictures of the Cue……..
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The BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones reports from the Las Vegas Consumers Electronics Show on this year’s best new gadgets and includes two Cambridge companies, LBO and Plastic Logic.
Plastic Logic says that the wraps are still on their product but their site but Que has already been announced. Now the site has been updated with lots of information on the QUE. Lots more on the website QUE. But who would want to order one until Steve Jobs reveals the iSlate?
I wonder what business plan resource the academic founders of Plastic Logic used as so much money has been raised to launch the product? I thought that they would be selling the screens to the likes of HP,Sony and Samsung. A very different business model from CSR and other Cambridge Cluster companies which receive royalties for intellectual property.
Let us hope that there is a special Cambridge Cluster version at a good discount for us locals.
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Image via CrunchBase
CES opens tomorrow and I wonder how many Cambridge Cluster companies will be showcasing their products.
One is Light Blue Optics with their “Light Touch™ (is) an interactive projector that instantly transforms any flat surface into a touch screen”. A spin-out from Cambridge University, it took a couple of years to gain traction and then raised lots of VC funds and brought in experienced management. The original idea was for it to be small enough to be incorporated into a mobile phone but now it has a large housing and incorporates some clever infra-red technology to make the picture interactive. I guess competitors have made smaller projectors but nothing interactive.
Scobleizez, the BBC and thousands of others are making their way to CES and hope that they pick up the story.
I wonder about their business plan resource as I heard that some angels made an early investment and it would be interesting to see if they and the founders have been able to keep a reasonable stake or will the founders be relying on options?
It is great to see a dream moving from Cambridge to the world of CES. If only one of the founders had the ability of Steve Jobs to promote LBO. I can only think of being in the queue (or standing in line) for Apple’s tablet (the iSlate?) later in the month.
ps It would be good if LBO had a flick site from which Zemanta could build a media gallery………. How quickly will I find the Apple Tablet picture on Zemanta?
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