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Silicon Valley Nation: Sell your startup or stay?
Brian Fuller
11/15/2012 9:00 AM EST
How to grow
"We're engineers, we're not investors. We've been doing it for fun, we've been growing organically. But to stay relevant, we're going to have to grow with that risk [and] we have to double every two years, every process generation, to stay relevant, because companies don't want to source IP from a small company and other small companies," Rogers said. "They want to get everything [from] as few players as they can."
Meanwhile, established companies are struggling to develop and maintain their own specialty IP--especially analog IP--and patents. It mitigates or eliminates their development risk, hence the reason Analog Bits gets queries from potential buyers.
The IP world has always been a strange place. The technology's value is undeniable, but how to value it has never been easily resolved (remember "star IP?"). MIPS and ARM once were the big dogs, but MIPS, a larger IP provider, has struggled in recent years, while ARM has soared to new heights.
Last year, MIPS put itself on the market. Earlier this month rival ARM and and Imagination Technologies divvied up MIPS' assets. Price: $60 million.
Artisan Components, once an independent and high-flying IP company, was acquired several years ago by ARM. In many cases, EDA companies' IP libraries are filled with white-labeled third-party IP (Analog Bits does Cadence's DDR memory, for example).
How long Analog Bits remains independent is an open question. They're not rejecting the notion, but neither Rogers nor Tirupattur is the type to take acquisition money and go sit on a beach with an umbrella-festooned drink in hand.
Related stories:
--ARM, Imagination divvy up MIPS
--Silicon Valley Nation: California's slow bleed
--Silicon Valley Nation: Forbes innovation list disses electronics
"We're engineers, we're not investors. We've been doing it for fun, we've been growing organically. But to stay relevant, we're going to have to grow with that risk [and] we have to double every two years, every process generation, to stay relevant, because companies don't want to source IP from a small company and other small companies," Rogers said. "They want to get everything [from] as few players as they can."
Meanwhile, established companies are struggling to develop and maintain their own specialty IP--especially analog IP--and patents. It mitigates or eliminates their development risk, hence the reason Analog Bits gets queries from potential buyers.
The IP world has always been a strange place. The technology's value is undeniable, but how to value it has never been easily resolved (remember "star IP?"). MIPS and ARM once were the big dogs, but MIPS, a larger IP provider, has struggled in recent years, while ARM has soared to new heights.
Last year, MIPS put itself on the market. Earlier this month rival ARM and and Imagination Technologies divvied up MIPS' assets. Price: $60 million.
Artisan Components, once an independent and high-flying IP company, was acquired several years ago by ARM. In many cases, EDA companies' IP libraries are filled with white-labeled third-party IP (Analog Bits does Cadence's DDR memory, for example).
How long Analog Bits remains independent is an open question. They're not rejecting the notion, but neither Rogers nor Tirupattur is the type to take acquisition money and go sit on a beach with an umbrella-festooned drink in hand.
Related stories:
--ARM, Imagination divvy up MIPS
--Silicon Valley Nation: California's slow bleed
--Silicon Valley Nation: Forbes innovation list disses electronics
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Brian Fuller2
11/15/2012 1:21 PM EST
It's interesting to note that in almost every survey we've done going back two decades, 90 % of you aspire to run a startup.
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Comfortable
11/15/2012 9:22 PM EST
Aspirations are like ideas. Everyone has them. But few have the ambition to follow through. This is why patents are NOT given out for ideas, but for reducing to practice.
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Brian Fuller2
11/16/2012 11:48 AM EST
@comfortable. Too true! I wonder how those engineer aspirations stack up against other industries? (Of course not every industry has a startup culture, so there'd have to be some apples-apples comparisons... but still... )
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