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David Manners on his Electronics Weekly Blog titled Mannerisms had an interesting post the other week titled “Why Are There Fewer Chip Start-Up Successes?” Apparently, this question was raised over at the Future Horizons’ System and SOC Conference in Prague the other month.  Several executives from startups, including Lattice Semiconductor and Icera Semiconductor, responded to the question although there seemed to be only modest overlap in their answers. On the one hand, it was suggested that the bar got raised on the funding, and that additionally VCs simply were no longer willing to take big risks. Another point of view was that that unlike the 80s, the 90s simply lacked radical new innovations on the semiconductor side which yielded fewer opportunities for startups to take advantage of the new advances. Or, could it be that the VCs’ focus might have simply shifted over the last couple of decades away from semiconductors to other exciting fields: First, toward internet startups in the late 90s, then toward bio-engineering, and as of late in the direction of clean-fuel technologies and web 2.0 startups. There is no reason for VCs to be different than most regular investors, when a sector is hot, more and more money tends to flow that way. Additionally, the shorter the time frame for an investment to potentially yield a lucrative return, and the lower the initial investment required, the more investment interest it is likely to receive. Let’s face it, web startups need significantly less capital and time to turn a profit for their investors than chip startups, and thus are also significantly less of a risk. There is always something to be said about long term investing and enormous payoffs, but since lately VCs seem to prefer riding trends rather than budging them, maybe they are also partaking in our culture’s ever decreasing attention spans.

You’ve worked several years for a large corporation with a decent salary and good benefits. After a while though you got bored of being just another peon, who did a lot but was rarely recognized, so you made up your mind and decided to jump ship, only to land in yet another large corporation. Sure you might have a higher salary now, or maybe even an office rather than a cube, but this achievement is likely to wear off as you realize that you are more or less number in a huge database of other numbers. Fed up with large firms you are craving something more exciting, and so you decide that a small startup where each team member knows you by name would be a welcome change.

Which is exactly where the problem begins for finding a job with a startup company is not exactly an easy task. First of all, major job-search web sites don’t usually have an option to filter search results by startup-company. Then again, many early stage startups probably don’t use these services anyhow, rather opting for local job-sites that might yield a better return on investment. Another strategy might be to search for startup companies directly; however, if you’ve ever tried this approach using just about any of the major search engines out there, you came away with many search results, but most of them irrelevant. Yet another strategy is to visit venture capital firm websites and examine their portfolio companies. This however is a very tedious process: First you have to find the actual venture capital firm website, then you have to look through companies that the firm is currently funding, find some that might be of interest to you, and only then examine those company web-sites for possible job listings. That is, if you are lucky and the company is no longer operating in stealth-mode and actually has a functional web-site.

As it turns out, the process of finding a gig with a startup company can be a lot simpler thanks to VentureLoop. The premise of the service is simple; bring startups, entrepreneurs and talent together. Thus, satisfying individuals that are interested in startups while helping startups locate talent they would most likely miss on the large job-posting sites. To make this happen, VentureLoop works directly with venture-backed startup companies as well as venture capital firms and is able to aggregate job postings that usually cannot be found on other job boards. Although the company has been around since 1999, it is not clear how long their startup job posting service has been online, since the logo still seems to indicate that it is in Beta. After signing up for an account, which only takes a few seconds, the site works like most other job-boards: you can search for jobs based on keywords or geographic location, create your own profile, create a search agent that will alert you of new openings, and apply for available positions - with the distinguished advantage that all positions are with startup companies. You can search for summer internship opportunities as well, albeit this functionality is currently restricted to Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan students, and an official school email address is required to gain access to that part of the site. Anyhow, if you’re yearning for the excitement and stress that only a startup can offer, and of course a possible buyout or IPO that will make you rich beyond  your wildest dreams, you would be making a mistake by not giving VentureLoop a look.

The other week EETimes.com released several snippets from their annual salary and opinion survey. At first it seems that electrical engineers in the United States do rather well compared to their European and Japanese counterparts, with median earnings of $108k, $61k, and $65k, respectively. Now where it gets a little bit confusing is that the median earnings for American engineers include benefits. What is not exactly clear is what benefits are taken into consideration? Medical, 401k, ESPP, bonuses, or maybe all of the above? It is also not clear what benefits, if any, are included for European and Japanese engineers. Sure engineers in many European countries might earn less money wise, but healthcare and other benefits might be provided by the government instead. Some clarification of these points would be very much appreciated. There are also a few other points of concern. Why is it that the survey had 1,600 respondents from the United States and 1,900 from Japan, but only 164 from Europe? Either someone did not do their job very well, or it has to be concluded that the electrical engineering profession has all but disappeared from the European continent. To be fair, 164 respondents are more than EETimes obtained last year, but the number is still rather pathetically small.

Salaries aside, it is clear the engineers in the United States are highly concerned about foreign competition due to outsourcing and H1-B visa levels, as these were the predominantly cited issues of concern. A more detailed breakdown of the immigration issue can be found over here, where a whopping 37% of American engineers support a limit on the number and time that foreign workers may work in the U.S. Furthermore, a staggering 44% believe that foreign nationals that earned engineering degrees in the U.S. ought to be able to work in the U.S. only for a limited amount of time after graduation. This attitude is absolutely contrary to what many economic scholars suggest as the proper course of action for the U.S. in order to stay competitive with other countries over the next few decades. As discussed in a previous post, the Kauffman Foundation for example recommends a disbanding of the H1-B visa cap altogether. Others have suggested for the U.S. to institute programs that would enable students of advanced degrees to obtain citizenship upon successful completion of these degrees. Clearly, what American engineers believe is best for their career in the engineering field at this point does not align with what many policy makers and economic pundits believe to be best for the country in the long-term. Then again, maybe foreign workers don’t exactly want to stick around in the U.S. anyhow. Plenty of developing countries offer very good opportunities for skilled workers nowadays, and most of them offer significantly more vacation time that gets fully utilized by the workforce – translation: no more feeling bad about taking off two or three weeks at a time.

You won’t find detailed information on stealth startup Black Sand Technologies from their web-site. About the only things you will find is that they are a fabless semiconductor company based out of Austin, TX developing solutions for the wireless industry. Additionally, the company recently successfully completed raising $8.2 Million in Series A Financing from Austin Ventures and North Bridge Partners. Lucky for us, the Austin American-Statesman recently found out a few more details about the startup and was nice enough to share them with us in an editorial. A short summery of the findings: The company, currently employs just a dozen people and expects the initial funding to last about two years, or just long enough to design chips that revolutionaize how wireless devices amplify data and voice signals. It seems that most of the current staff previously worked at Silicon Laboratories, which by the way was also funded by Austin Ventures. The company mission at this point is to come up with a technique to implement power amplifiers using conventional silicon chip technology, thus making them much easier to integrate with a wide range of wireless devices. Keep in mind that what conventional silicon technology actually means is left to the reader’s interpretation. While I don’t know any of the founders personally, it seems that most people who do, consider them to be top notch, and it will be wise to keep an eye on the company in the near future. Chip samples are expected to become available at the end of 2008. In the mean time, if you are really interested and want to find out some more details or even partake in the adventure, Black Sand Technologies is currently looking for some experienced and talented mixed-signal and RF engineers.