Cambridge spills some start-up secrets

It isn't all that long ago that the average British professor was pretty snooty at the thought of working for a company. Now it is almost a badge of honour. And Cambridge can justifiably claim to have been an early adopter of this craze, with such people as Professor Sir Richard Friend breaking the rules and patenting his research before going on to set up not just Cambridge Display Technology but also Plastic Logic. Since then the trickle has turned into a flood, pushing up the prices of commercial property in the CB2 postcode.

 

Starting a technology company: A guide for University of Cambridge staff and students, edited by Miranda Weston-Smith and Peter Luebcke, is a crash course for academics who want to spin out. While the book, which you can download for nothing from the web site at Cambridge Enterprise,  is for the locals, as Professor Mike Kelly, head of the The Cambridge-MIT Institute for three years, puts it, " its value goes further, as much of this guide will also be applicable to those starting up companies from other universities in the UK".

 

There's a load of excellent advice here. "What many people fail to appreciate is that real customers in the market will not usually care about the clever technology; they only care about what the product or service will do for them or their businesses." That's from Tony Wilson who "runs his own consultancy and coaching business, helping Cambridge technology-based companies to develop marketing and selling strategies". Pretty obvious stuff, but worth saying especially to academics who get bowled over by what their neat science can do.

 

Being in Cambridge, the editors can draw on lots of local expertise. There's Shai Vyakarnam, Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning at the University of Cambridge, writing about "Value-creation models".

 

Sir Robin Saxby Chairman, ARM Holdings plc, offers a viewpoint in which he warns "Bright people with energy can learn new skills quickly if they are led by someone of suitable experience, but a team is only as good as its weakest link. Be honest about the team’s strengths and weaknesses. Learning by doing and iteration of plans is a good method for making progress."

 

Laurence John, CEO of Amadeus Mobile Seed Fund, "which provides seed money for start-ups in the mobile and wireless sector," writes about the valuation of early stage companies and offers advice on when to raise money. "It is important to consider the stage you are at and what type of company you wish to build. Consider first whether you wish to build a large or small company and the relative capital intensity of each option."

 

Many people will have read most of this advice before. The value here is the authority of the authors and the fact that this is tightly written stuff that does not try to make any staggering claims. Pass on the details of this book to any academic who approaches you to invest in their business. It could save you, and them, a lot of time.