I spent a chunk of last week on one of my committee chairing jobs wrestling with both sides of a rather tricky issue. On the first day I was chairing a committee attempting to make sense of the recommendations of independent experts on what projects should be funded and in what priority. In six years and €70 million I don’t …
UK Develops Crowd Sourced Nanotechnology Strategy
The UK government is giving everyone a chance to influence and inform the UK strategy (what do you mean, what strategy? eh?) While there is no new information, it’s good to see everything brought together in one place. Each section allows users to give their opinion, and also has a high level SWOT analysis, although some of it is a …
Is a Half Baked £1Bn Innovation Fund Better Than None At All?
@Lord Drayson had a quick look at my take on the new innovation fund and tweeted This article misunderstands how this fund will work. I will blog on the BIS site to spell it out. I’m looking forward to it. There is no doubt about the commitment of the Lords Mandelson and Drayson to stimulating the UK economy though science …
The UK Innovation Fund – Just As Half Baked As Most Business Plans?
I’m probably nor the only one to be underwhelmed by the UK governments new £1Bn “Innovation Fund” – it’s actually £150m but there are hopes that with private sector leverage it could swell to £1Bn by, erm, 2019! The main worry is that the UK government has made a habit in recent years of announcing things and then forgetting about …
Class R Stock – A New Mechanism For Funding Science Based Start Ups?
One of the biggest threats to scientific innovation has always been the lack of capital. Venture capital only really makes sense if companies can grow rapidly, and most other equity investments tend to be illiquid until an exit is found. Brian McConnel at Gigacom takes a look at ‘Class R’ stock, a possible investment model that is halfway between a …
Tech VCs Hope For A Quick Recovery
The chart below shows the recent decline in valuations of late stage venture backed companies as reported by the Wall Street Journal. It’s a decline that hurts everybody, with cash starved companies taking whatever they can get, which is often a far cry from what was promised and according to the WSJ, existing investors are increasingly resorting to propping up …
Zettacore Change Tack
Interesting to see Zettacore raising a $21m series C, some six years after they first started our promising to replace silicon with molecular memories, although that’s not the application that is attracting interest right now. As Nikkei Electronics reported last week – they look to have a customer for their Molecular Interface (aren’t most interfaces molecular?) technology that helps with …
Cleantech Investors Desperately Seeking The Exit
In my predictions over the last year I mentioned that Clean Tech would have a rocky time in 2009 for four reasons Renewable energy interest tends to lag oil prices by 6-12 months and with oil almost back to 2006 levels a lot of transient interest will evaporate Lot’s of clean tech companies based their business models on sustained high …
Angels vs VCs
Stephen Fleming at Academic VC has an interesting article about the diverging interests of angel investors & VCs. The basic premise is that the high returns required by venture funds drive them to take decisions which are neither in the interest of the founders nor the early stage (Angel) investors. I’ve seen this happen in a number of companies, and …
The Best Minds in the UK At Loggerheads Over Technology
British scientists are hopping mad about comments from Bank of England Governor, Mervyn King, who recently argued against increased science funding, presumably on the grounds that all the money had already been spent on health and safety agencies, totally ineffective government agencies and bailing out Scottish Banks. I would expect the Governor of the Bank of England to understand a little bit of …