EEDA announces a £1.85million grant to fund the growth of the bio hub, Colworth Science Park in Bedfordshire. “The proposed academic presence would be led by Cranfield School of Management and by Cambridge University’s Institute for Manufacturing and Judge Business School Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning. Based within a state-of-the-art knowledge hub, academic staff would be able to work with a range of companies in a commercial setting with the full support of modern, shared facilities, amenities and equipment.”
Are no angels or entrepreneurs needed from the Cambridge Cluster or are they expected to work for nothing? Should EEDA have budgeted an amount for the angels? Can academics build clusters? Does Cranfield have much experience of building clusters? It will be an interesting experiment and I hope that the academics will be studying themselves and writing papers. If successful, we angels are redundant! Long live the hub! Or should Walter Herriot OBE take up a retirement home at Colworth? How about an entrepreneur-in-residence or three?
You could run a few Y Combinator courses for £1.85million.
Dragon James Caan says the secret to growing a successful business it to incentivise people, giving them a stake in a business so that if they are creating value for it, they are also creating value for themselves.
He did well with Alexander Mann Group and repeated it with Humana International, both recruitment consultants. Now he rund private equity firm, Hamilton Bradshaw. The team has traditional business experience and likes property and rescue deals. No sign of any Cambridge Cluster type deals.
Geoff was never happy with the technology and millions of dollars later, Splashpower has drowned just after the first customer had come on board. The two founders, Lily Chang and James Hay are long gone and hopefully on new careers. Is this the first CUE loss after a VC round?
Audio company, SADiE has also splashed and has been taken over by Prism Sound – I guess there will be more changes in these challenging times.
They are all search engines and each has their own Equity Fingerprint, a business plan resource, as well as being based on algorithms. Mike Lynch claims an “immaculate conception” for Autonomy or he did at his talk at CEC8. Apparently Autonomy spun-out in some form from another source so there were very few start-ups costs (a bit like Microsoft who bought their initial software) and they could get down to the business of selling. Unusually Continue Reading »
This is a diagram from two excellent budget papers mentioned by CandidCapital in their post on Of Budgets and White Papers. First, the Innovation White Paper: Innovation Nation and secondly Enterprise: unlocking the UK’s Talent. Both have much to recommend them and provide good background material.
The diagram above is similar to the work done by the Director of the Judge Business School on clusters. There is little reference to the importance of Active Equity Companies and clusters are relegated to a minor role rather than something to be understood and replicated.
No, this is not Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki helping you to start a business. This is Art of the Book by Mia Leijonstedt from Finland and now living in Dubai. She produces the most wonderful “handbound books”. She has exhibited internationally Continue Reading »
A previous post mentions how Spinvox has turned to the Cambridge Cluster to accelerate their software. Gigaom says that “London startup SpinVox raised $100 million today in a round of financing that values the company at $500 million. That’s big money for a company that translates voicemails into text, but SpinVox Continue Reading »
Anyone looking to build a business then look no further. Can you devise a machine that will crimp a Cornish pastie? The video will show that there is more to crimping than sticking two bits of pastry together. Amazingly all Cornish pasties are crimped by hand.
How about making a machine that produces balls of ice-cream? Today all the balls of ice-cream we enjoy in the summer have to be produced manually so it is very labour intensive.
Cornwall is the place to go for field trials so take your sur-board!
Doble Quality Foods Limited of St Agnes, Cornwall, has now reached the ripe old age of sixty plus (don’t ask) and is looking for more growth. First they need to move location as the business and the size of articulated delivery vehicles is too large for the local roads. Doble has just received planning permission for a residential development, against the wishes of some of the local residents who moved in much later. They were happy when their kids were given holiday jobs but did not want a busy business replaced with a few houses. I guess we all have a bit of the NIMBY about us but a bit of a cheak to take the penny and then complain or even to enjoy months of generous hospitality – it is a long story!
When will they move and how will it effect local employment? Apparently 25% of property in St Agnes is second homes so they will not miss the business. I guess they do not even use the local services so who needs local employment.
It is so much easier to have an Active Equity Company and sell out within ten years than to build and keep going these family controlled or Passive Equity Companies with all the responsibility to local communities and long-serving employees.
Cambridge is a wonderful place to start a business but when can we have a high-tech cluster in St Agnes so we can de-stress after work with a bit of surfing? I know a good location.
At the CUE training event, serial entrepreneur and angel, Jack Lang had us all reciting his mantra for the successful technology start-up and it is worth repeating it: “Global sustainable under-served market need”. Each word has a purpose. Global is USA, China and India; sustainable Continue Reading »
