ChipCrunch.com

There are many great ideas out there, but few ever make it from the concept phase into an actual product, and even fewer end up as profitable business ventures. Money, while not the magical pill as was proven by countless .com companies towards the end of the nineties, can however go a long way of at least helping you get out of the starting block. But with so many ideas, and just as many failures, it is not surprising that venture capitalists are very selective about where they choose to invest their assets. Any tips that might help score that money are therefore much appreciated. Conveniently, CNNMoney just published a short article titled 5 Tips to Score Venture Capital Funding, in which venture capital representatives from Safeguard Scientific, Beringea, Cross Atlantic Capital Partners, and Kodiak Venture Partners comment on what they like to see in a startup. According to the VCs the people that are behind the business plan are more important than the plan that got them in the door in the first place, since the plan is likely to change over time and it will be up to them to make sure that it does as market conditions change. Thus, the things they look for are: passion, focus, the team that has been assembled to take on the challenge at hand, uniqueness of the approach or in other words innovations, and finally a potential product that will make enough money to make it a worthwhile investment. Generally, pretty logical things and what one would expect VCs to say, the only point that I would elaborate on is the innovation part and that statement that the product needs to be different as opposed to more and better. There has to be some innovation for sure, but what needs to be kept in mind that the innovation does not need to necessarily come on the product itself, but can be on the process for creating a similar product. The market place is littered with examples where the first company to deliver a new and unique product eventually fell by the wayside after being outdone by someone who had a better process of creating a very similar clone.

The intervals at which EETimes.com updates their emerging startup list is very inconsistent, and so it comes that just three months after publishing their 6.0 list, which we analyzed here, they’ve published an updated 6.1 version. There really is not that much new on this updated list. Two companies have left the list, namely Tarari and Clear Shape Technologies. The former has been acquired by the LSI Corporation and the latter has been acquired by Cadence Design Systems. The respective press release for the acquisitions can be found here and here. Newcomers to the 6.1 list include Kenet Inc., Perpetuum Ltd., and Phiar Corporation. Kenet Inc is a fabless semiconductor company that specializes in mixed-signal solutions for portable electronics. It was founded to commercialize the FemtoCharge technology that was developed at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. Perpetuum is a startup that focuses on vibration energy-harvesting, enabling wireless and battery-free sensors. Finally, Phiar is developing nano-scale stacks of metal and insulators that enable devices that can operate at terahertz frequencies.

History is littered with examples where better technologies or vastly superior products did not end up dominating the marketplace. An established company with deep pockets can on occasion tolerate an unsuccessful product, although the company’s stockholders might beg the differ; however, for a startup company the success of the initial product is likely to be a life or death event. Ground-breaking technology is a start, but unless it can be productized into a solution that solves actual customer problems, the likelihood of success is minimal. The job of taking this new technology and effectively converting into a product that can be sold to consumers usually falls to a seasoned marketing executive. The problem is, finding one who is able to flourish and succeed in a startup environment is quite difficult, especially since most marketing executives are used to outsized budgets that tend to be available in large corporations. Good thing then that the Caltech Industrial Relations Center together in collaboration with Chris Halliwell have recently started the Technology Marketing Center, or TMC for short. The TMC website is easy on the eyes and has several useful resources including blogs, case studies, and executive interviews which are presented in audio format.

One of the latest interviews is titled: What VCs Want in a Marketing Executive with Charles Beeler and Patty Burke. Charles Beeler and Patty Burke are both associated with El Dorado Ventures, a venture capital firm that provides early-stage funding for technology companies, and present some useful information with regard to hiring a marketing executive for a startup. Topics that are discussed during the interview include: marketing differences between established and startup companies, interview tips for hiring marketing executives, the voice of the consumer process, common marketing issues, marketing tools, and common mistakes. The Q&A session is a little bit too short in my opinion but overall the interview provides some very interesting insight. There are several upcoming interviews that might be of interest as well, including one titled: Creating Market Leadership in China with Patrick O'Doherty from Analog Devices on September 25th at 10 am Pacific Time. All interviews are archived so that they can be replayed later, run about thirty minutes, and are freely available to the public – simply put, there is no reason you should be missing out on them.

As discussed in a recent post, for the last few years power consumption has become one of the predominant issues in chip design, leading the industry down the path to multi-core processors and beyond. But clever architectural designs and sophisticated circuit techniques are only a few of a myriad of ways in dealing with the problem – how about improving the way chips are being cooled? This might seem at first like a band aid for power inefficient design, until the realization sets in that the industry is way past the point where a band aid might help and that already there are major problem with cooling chips; simply take a look at some of the monstrosities that can be found in desktop PCs and servers these days. Well, there might be some relief on the horizon, curtsey of Purdue University and their recent breakthrough in chip cooling. Using what the team refers to as ionic wind engines, the researchers were able to increase the heat-transfer coefficient by 250% percent when combined with a traditional fan.  A higher heat-transfer coefficient indicates a more efficient cooling process, thus leading to a possible decrease in heat-sink and fan sizes that might be required to cool a particular component, which in turn might enable thinner electronic devices.

The key idea that leads to the vastly improved heat-transfer coefficient lies in the research team’s ability to increase the airflow at the surface of the chip, which is where the ionic wind engines come into play. These engines are created through closely spaced electrodes near the chip surface. When voltage is applied, electrically charge atoms, or ions, travel between the negatively charged electrode and the positively charged electrode. However, on their journey they encounter positively charged air particles, and become positively charged atoms themselves. Instead of continuing their journey the positively charged atoms do a u-turn so to say and proceed back to the negative electrode, thus completing the ionic wind engine. The oppositely charged electrodes are not placed next to each other as one might initially assume, but rather are placed vertically on top of each other with a fixed spacing in-between. This minimizes the no-slip effect that is caused when air flows over an object, by ensuring that the molecules closest to the surface of the object don’t remain stationary.  In other words, the ionic wind engines ensure there is a good molecule circulation away from the chip surface, where it is needed most – which is not the case with traditional air-based cooling.

There is still plenty of work that needs to be done and commercial applications are not expected for at least another three years by which time the team hopes to have the technology working reliably at the micron scale. Nevertheless, some cooling relief seems to be on the horizon.