Digital Pariah

Internet of Things Tech City UK Launchpad

" The Technology Strategy Board, with Tech City UK Ltd and Cambridge Wireless, are to invest up to £1m to support micro, small and medium-sized businesses working on the Internet of Things (IoT). This competition will support innovative research projects centred in and around the clusters in Cambridge (equipment and communications) and London (software and services).

This competition aims to stimulate these hotspots of IoT industries by enabling companies to move towards commercial success. We want to draw investment and people into the areas and to encourage networking and collaboration to strengthen the clusters."

I'm starting to think I have an obligation to do something more constructive - there aren't many people around who can actually do things, so those of us who can should do what we can. I am, however, somewhat limited in both the amount of time and amount of imagination I can bring to bear.

There are a number of things on the go at the moment which probably warrant their own entries. Aside from that, I intend to ramp up some of my Internet of Things investigations, there is a government run competition which might be worth entering and I have just ordered some more equipment to do prototyping. Mostly this is Arduino-centric, although there is included an Intel SoC devboard which is pin-compatible with the Arduino. Kit:

• GPS


• Voice activator


• RFID


• Remote control


• smart card reader


• wifi power switch


• proximity detector


• Bluetooth OBD (again!)


• Pi/Arduino shield adaptor


• accelerometer

Tags:

• internet of things
• kit
• planning

This years Venturefest had a more positive feel than last year, there were at least people talking about financing and things appear to be happening. I'm reassured by seeing the state of the Magellium demos, they are showing off things that are not that dis-similar in state to some of the things I've been working on, leading me to feel more positive about those projects. It still wasn't as vibrant as it has been, with an empty space in the quad where previously there have been marquees. Some of that is caused by dilution, they are trying to set up other venturefests around the country, but I get the feeling that doesn't account for all of it.

It feels like we're at the very early stages of the next rise of the roller coaster, with a number of small companies who have been bootstrapping their small ideas and are looking for angel investors to cover their next 6-12 months. Fever pitch isn't going to happen any time soon, but there's a quiet confidence around.

Magellium

I spoke with two people, a guy whos name I didn't catch and Deidre Kelly, a GIS developer. Deidre showed me some demos of their systems:

• empty office space at Harwell
• cluster view of venturefest clusters in Oxfordshire
• annotations

One of the big things they do is geographic information for agriculture, looking for misclaimed subsidies and crop blights, they have sensors that can pick up microclimates in fields and/or on tractors. They are a small wing of a large French company, based in offices at Harwell. They were interested in some of my location systems, and it feels like there could be some opportunity to work together, but I don't know what that looks like - I have Deidres card and intend to mail her.

Robot Car

I spoke with one of the representatives of Robot Car, who explained that their sensor kit costs around 1000, with the aim of bringing that down to around 100. It can be applied to any car, and is approved for street testing but awaiting regulation for commercialisation.

Musings from the cliff edge

This was a talk by an angel investor, Rajat Malhotra. He runs Wren Capital, an angel company who invest in seed through to series A funding rounds, investing 50k-300k. He has had two insolvencies and one floatation.

• Don't dabble, if you're going to do it, do it seriously
• Use syndication
• spreads risk
• reduces competition
• gives everyone a better chance
• but *do due-diligence* on co-investors
• often these will be people you've dealt with before, so thats already done
• Two ends of the spectrum
• Simple story is an easy sell
• Complex is a harder sell but bigger reward, watch the funding roadmap, often hiccups along the way
• Valuations are important, more so for those that wind up as walking dead
• Build relationships with the CEOs, they should feel comfortable phoning if they need help

Innovations in ICT

I attended a talk about how to grow innovation in Oxfordshire, there was a panel of six or seven business people who discussed various problems and ways to encourage more companies to the area. A few of the points they raised:

• improved connectivity
• better publicity for available small/short term office space

7 massive mistakes negotiating overseas

This was a talk by a negotiation trainer, and seemed to be as much about general negotiation as overseas. He broke his talk down into 7 parts:

1. Preparation
• positioning - think about what you are negotiating and why
• planning
• culture - get to know about the culture of the people you are negotiating with
• national
• corporate
• their background
• local issues, things going on in the city or country
2. Connecting
• building rapport
• appropriate gifts
• handshakes tell you a lot
• overhand (or turn-to-overhand) - 'I'm in control' - price goes up so theres more room to give a bigger discount to make them feel like they won
3. Ask and Listen
• keep questions short and simple, but open ended, don't back them into a corner
4. Positions
• Best position
• Target position
• Walkaway position
• Alternative position - if you have to walk away, what fills the gap?
5. Reading people and situations
• body language
• voice
• words
• sensory acuity
6. Psychological moves
• good guy/bad guy
• higher authority
• Columbo - dumb is smart
• time
• time-out
• flinching
7. Confidence
• overconfidence

Fubar Radio

This was a long pitch, 15 minutes or so. Touting the come-back of radio, especially 'adult entertainment' talk and quiz shows. They are basically exploiting a hole in the regulation of online broadcasters to use mobile systems to broadcast their shows. They gave some numbers projecting growth to millions from a couple of months worth of data.

Thong Heng

Elevator pitch. They're a company making a machine to harvest rubber, this is needed because many of the skilled rubber tappers are moving to the city where they can earn more money, leaving behind family rubber farms with no workforce. They make a machine that replaces the tappers. Business model is clear, as is market need.

Don't F with me

Elevator pitch. They're a company making an application for teenage girls, although I wasn't actually very clear on what the app did or why anyone would use it. The aim of the company is a social good of reducing abuse of teenage girls, but quite how the app helped with that I didn't get. It seems like they're in the same kind of space as facebook without the focus to get where they want to go.

I attended several sessions and spoke with a few people outside of those sessions, although admittedly not that many.

There follows some write ups of some of the talks, pitches and companies I encountered while there.

I came away from this years Venturefest with the impression that the majority of funding available at the moment is government funding - last year there was a lot of talk about bootstrapping and self funding companies, but even that had disappeared this year.

I didn't see any major themes to where the excitement is at the moment, the organisers had tried to generate some by splitting things into four 'cluster' areas, motorsport, cryogenics, digital industries and biotech, but for me, none of these had much in the way of general excitement around them - though of course within each there were a few highlights.

My overall take home on the day was quite depressing.

Supporting Startups
I arrived in time to catch the end of the session, where there were some questions about _connect and KTNs and a discussion of government support for innovation and publicity. I picked up the Technology Strategy Board Delivery Plan for the year, which describes their funding strategies and competition areas.

Motorsport Cluster
Next up was a tour of the motorsport cluster in the Oxford area. Oxford Brookes University has set up a Motorsport course. There was a focus on taking technology from the track to the street, and mention of the complexity of supply chains.

There is a new Formula E race series for electric race cars.

Yasa Motors gave a presentation about their products and the knowledge transfer partnership with Oxford Brookes.

The session was rounded off by a talk from Bluebird Racing, who are once again reinventing themselves in an attempt to gain more speed records.

Digital Industries
Next up was a talk about Digital Industries, starting with a presentation by Connected Digital Economy Catapult who are this year focussing on digital health, connected cities and media.

The Digital Copyright Exchange is being set up to ease the transfer and licensing of copyright material within the UK.

Quick Fire Pitches
There was an afternoon of quickfire pitches, where entrepreneurs spent 3 minutes pitching their ideas to a panel of potential funders and other backers. I only stayed for a few, but of the ones I saw, two stood out.

Transport Logistics Solutions - "TLS is a web-enabled service provider creating an efficient marketplace between energy suppliers and consumers who have no acces to natural gas for heating", that is they provide an improved buying power for consumers of heating oil.

Seed team - "A structured secure portal to match ideas with skills and talent from social enterprise service base, hobbiests, unemplyed and more" ...although their website could use a little more work. This is an interesting project for matching skills with needs outside the context of formal employment, matching customers to suppliers for small amounts of work.

Cryogenics
There was a whirlwind tour of the uses of cryogenics in modern life, which, while fascinating, didn't seem particularly relevant for a finance conference.

Isis Software Incubator
The day was rounded off with a talk from the Isis Software Incubator, who described their role as part of Isis Innovation, bringing research to the market from Oxford University, but also talked about how they are quite different from the normal Isis workflow. Often the software they bring to market comes as a side effect of the research rather than being a part of the research itself, so it has to be handled differently.

Other interesting things
The Dearman Engine is a liquid air engine which can be used in conjunction with internal combustion engines as a way to reclaim some energy from the low grade heat we currently send to the radiator.

The Manufacturing Advisory Service had a 3D printer working on their stand, with some models on show of what it creates.

I picked up a voucher for a free consultation with Alchemy Business Coaching.

Both Ford and GM have recently announced SDKs for integration with their cars.

The Ford developer site contains what looks like a well thought out suite of development tools, with an AppLink emulator and series of SDKs for various platforms to connect to it. There is also a suggestion that the OpenXC platform is supported.

Meanwhile, the GM developer site seems somewhat broken and uncared for, so I cannot get any real information from it - the registration doesn't work in my Firefox and their blog has run out of momentum.