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Planning for Growth - Building £1 Billion Companies
14 June 2005
The University of Cambridge Technology Ventures Conference takes place today at the Guildhall in London.
This leading conference will address the conditions required to grow technology-based start-ups into large globally focused enterprises. The keynote and panel speakers will share their experience of founding and managing fast growing technology ventures that have already passed or are still aiming for the £1 billion mark.
The opening keynote speech will be delivered by Sir Robin Saxby, Board Chairman of ARM Holdings plc. Professor Hasso Plattner, Co-founder of SAP AG, will give the closing keynote speech.
The conference is organised around four panel discussions focussed on the areas of Technology Convergence, Biotechnology, European Venture Capital and Green Ventures. Panel participants include: Mr Simon East, Co-Founder, Cognima Ltd; Dr Hermann Hauser, Co-Founder, Amadeus Capital Partners Limited; Dr Andrew Richards, Co-founder, Arakis Ltd and Chiroscience Group plc and Ms Sandra Robertson, Head of Alternative Assets, Wellcome Trust.
The Technology Ventures Conference is held through the sponsorship of Cambridge Enterprise, The Cambridge-MIT Institute, MIT Entrepreneurship Center, Taylor Wessing and Prelude Ventures.
The same evening, teams from Cambridge University and MIT will attend the 5th Annual Gala Networking Reception & Dinner at the Guildhall in London, hosted by Cambridge Enterprise, University of Cambridge and the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.
The teams will share the pitches that earned them their winning titles in the Business Creation Competition, which was launched by the University of Cambridge in 2000 and inspired by the success of the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition.
EnvAl, one of the winners of the £50K Business Creation Competition, successfully persuaded six of the city's leading business angel investors and entrepreneurs into giving their business £150,000 in start-up funding for an equity share. Balico, the grand prize winner of the MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition, will apply $30,000 in start-up money towards launching their business. The other successful teams were Nanocell Power, BOPPHY Technologies, Vacuum Excavation Technology, and Cambfix.
The Business Creation Competition in Cambridge has distributed more than £200,000 in prize money and spun out more than 18 companies headed by students and other University members, including Splashpower and Novexin. The MIT $50K Entrepreneurship Competition has launched more than 80 companies from teams that have competed since its launch in 1990. These companies - which include Akamai Technologies (NASDAQ: AKAM) and others acquired by Microsoft, Motorola and Broadcom - have, in turn, employed more than 1,600 people and have a valuation of over $4 billion.
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