|
GENEVA, Switzerland Ken Lawler, founding partner with SiliconVentures Inc., laid out his firm's innovative approach to backingchip companies with a $200 million fund, at a European executiveconference organized by the Global Semiconductor Alliance (GSA),held here this week. Recently formed Silicon Ventures intends to work with strategicinvestors in what Lawler calls a "balanced risk model." The modelrequires active involvement from the start between a potentialacquirer, the entrepreneurs and the investors. A major differencefrom conventional venture capital funding will be that startupswill only get money from the fund if it can attract a strategicsponsor who will agree the price at which to buy the company if andwhen agreed development milestones have been met on time. And thattime will be relatively short. Lawler showed the conferencespreadsheet calculations based on a 10-quarters investment periodalthough the time will vary from company to company. Lawler, who previously spent 17 years as a general partner atBattery Ventures, takes as his premise that the venture capitalsector has now abandoned the semiconductor industry and inparticular the digital fabless sector where chip development costshave become punishingly expensive. "The semiconductor ecosystem isdrying up fast," he told the GSA conference delegates. And this has happened because over the last 10 to 15 years too manysemiconductor startups have taken too much money and too much timeto get to market, Lawler said. But it is not just the chipdevelopment costs that are hurting the startups. The real problemis waiting for expected markets to take off, which then requireschip iterations or "doubling down" for startups to stay in thegame. The big problem is "the million-dollar per month burn rateover three, five, seven years," Lawler said. The venture capitalists have reacted to the aggregate poor returnon investment and gone elsewhere. And certainly many of the marketresearch tallies of chip startup funding activity show what Lawlerdescribed as a "countdown to oblivion." Lawler presented a chart tothe GSA conference delegates a chart that showed only onesemiconductor startup in North America has received Series Ainvestment in 2012. "The data may be under-reported but the trendis clear," he told EE Times on the sidelines of the event. The dearth of companies being born in the semiconductor galaxy iscausing concern amongst EDA companies who see chip startups as asource of seats to whom to sell their software and amongst largerchip companies as well. "The merger and acquisition opportunitiesare drying up for the bigger semiconductor companies," Lawleradded. Ken Lawler, founding partner with Silicon Ventures tells the GSAEuropean Executive conference there is a way to get fabless chipcompanies funded. The e-commerce company in China offers quality products such as Inflatable Advertising Balloon , China Political Advertising Balloon, and more. For more , please visit Giant Advertising Balloon today!
Related Articles -
Inflatable Advertising Balloon, China Political Advertising Balloon,
|
