Technology Start-Up Event

Our joint Silicon Catalyst and TechWorks event was conceived to help founders learn about the forming, storming, norming and then performing of UK semiconductor startup companies.

We had the great Malcolm Penn take us through the concept that no company is an island when testing their value proposition.

We kicked off with Phillip Burr describing the hugely generous Arm (a Silicon Catalyst strategic partner and In Kind Partner) Flexible Access program that releases the potential of semiconductor startup designers to get market leading design IP.

Two legends of our UK semiconductor startups Phil O’Donovan co-founder CSR Plc and Jerry Loraine talked about “how bad things happen to good people” with stories about patent trolls and go to market challenges.

This led naturally into “the importance of the team” with a single person invention idea from Bruno Johnson. Where Cascoda invented a radio architecture to increase range by 3x for Thread Group #iotdevices & is now shipping Arm based products into #smartcities #smartbuildings all around the world.
This section concluded with a compelling presentation from the illustrious Jim Nicholas walking us through the inventive team idea from Uniphy Ltd

The last session before the break had the wonderful Vaysh Kewada from Salience Labs (a Silicon Catalyst portfolio company) share her deep insights into “creating relentlessly repeatable processes from day 1” of your startup journey. Followed by a hugely insightful deep dive by Pete Hughes the foremost semiconductor product operations executive in the UK on how to ship high volume semiconductor products with the level of quality that your market leading customers will demand.

Back from the break where the Arm catering team laid on a spread that would not look out of place at the Ritz, we leapt into “what problem are you solving?” Patrick Camilleri shared his learnings on how to build semiconductor design IP combined SaaS product offerings and then Gary Spittle founder of Sonical Inc (A Silicon Catalyst portfolio company) projected the huge opportunity in their end to end system play to command the compute in the ear application space.

We concluded the presentations with the eternal “how much money will you need?” The marvellous Tony Milbourn who leads u-blox corporate venturing shared in detail how they look for the secret sauce of semiconductor startup success. Then Owen Metters Foresight Group Williams, the leading semiconductor VC investor in the UK took us through three compelling case studies.

The final panel session lead us into a lively debate into what we need to do to make UK Semiconductor great again and make sure we create an open and inclusive industry where everybody can thrive.