Quelle: Opinion: What makes the Cambridge cluster special? | University of Cambridge
Archiv der Kategorie: Entrepreneurship
Just listening to a great talk about entrepreneurship by Ikhlaq Sidhu from Berkeley’s Sutardaja Center at TEMSCON 2017
Cambridge new entrepreneurship programme
Impulse, the new entrepreneurship programme recently launched by the Maxwell Centre.
Unicorns: The Billion Dollar Startup Club
The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones VentureSource are tracking venture-backed private companies valued at $1 billion or more. See here how the unicorn club has expanded and select companies to learn more about each.
Cambridge graduates who improved Stephen Hawking’s speech software sell business to Microsoft | Cambridge News
It is difficult to understand the Cambridge Phenomenon
…but the Technopole Report helps a little to better understand Cambridge’s innovation system often also called Silicon Fen with today about 1,500 firms employing about 53,000 people.
The report lists numerous relevant actors, such as Cambridge Consultants, Cambridge Science Park (founded in 1970 by Trinity College), St John’s innovation centre (founded by St John’s College in 1987) and financiers such as Hermann Hauser that helped a nearly uncountable number of firms to grow and florish. Not to mention the numerous events and occasions where people meet informally and exchange ideas.
Succesful Cambridge companies include names such as Acorn Computing, Sinclair Research, Aveva, ARM and Autonomy. According to a recent WIRED article Cambridge has produced not less than 12 firms whose market capitalisation exceed $1bn. Probably most prominent is ARM. Founded in 1990, the semiconductor and software design company grew to become a multibillion valued competitor of Intel. Actually, by today its processors quasi dominate the markets for mobile phones, smartphones and tablets.
How Cambridge supports its spin-outs with funding
The University of Cambridge recently announced that it had pulled together partners to set up a £50 million fund called Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) for financing university spin-outs. Despite the impressive investment sum, the interesting aspect of the concept is that the fund intents to support entrepreneurial ventures with a long term return perspective so that young firms can hold the breath long enough to pass the „valley of death“.
Innocent, another successful Cambridge Start-up
I recently learned that three Cambridge graduates (St. John’s) invented the Smoothie and started Innocent in 1999. Well done! Although, the multi-million dollar sale to Coca Cola made the founders rich, it might not give you real credits for being a healthy business.
University seed funding
Last year, the University of Cambridge invested almost £2.3 million in university spinouts. Read more here how the university manages its funding, the available funding vehicles and which firms received the money.