Association tips 30 'European' startups likely to succeed

LONDON — A two-day conference organized by the European Tech Tour Association and held in Montreux, Switzerland, over Nov. 4 and 5 provided a platform for 30 startups to present to an audience of venture capital fund managers, bankers and related functions such head hunters as well as to their peers at similar companies.

The European Tech Tour (ETT) is a not-for-profit association founded under Swiss law by Sven Lingjaerde, a veteran European venture capitalists and co-founder and managing partner of Endeavour Vision (Geneva, Switzerland). This was ETT's second semiconductor summit, the first having been held in Leuven, Belgium in October 2006.

Alain Fanet, a director on the boards of network-on-chip company Arteris SA (Paris, France) and Coresonic AB (Linkoping, Sweden), served as volunteer president of the Second ETT Semiconductor Summit and helped manage the selection process.

Fanet said the aim of the Semiconductor Summit was to select the top 25 privately-held semiconductor companies in Europe and to help them achieve global expansion.

"In fact more than 260 companies applied and 30 were selected and of those 30 about 70 percent are looking for funding in the next 18 months," said Fanet. He added that in this second summit it was decided to increase the number of late-stage companies selected so that there was about a 50:50 mix.

Indeed one of the presenting companies is still privately-held after been formed in 1995. Two of the selected companies in 2006 have achieved successful exits, Fanet said while five of the companies who pitched in 2006 were selected to present again in 2008. However, four of the companies who presented in 2006 were denied the ETT platform in 2008.

The list of companies presenting at the ETT Semiconductor Summit included:

Advanced Circuit Pursuit AG
Advasense Technologies Ltd.
Air Semiconductors Inc.
Alchimer SA
Crocus Technologies SA

Elastix Corp.
Energy Micro A/S
Enigma Semiconductor Inc.
GreenPeak Technologies NV
Innovative Silicon Inc.

Inside Contactless SA
IPtronics A/S
Jennic Ltd.
Light Blue Optics Ltd.
Liquavista BV

Mapper Lithography BV
Mesa Imaging AG
Mirics Semiconductor Ltd.
Movea SA
Movidia Ltd.

Novaled AG
PicoChip Design Ltd.
RedMere Technology Ltd.
Replisaurus Technologies AB
Sequans Communications SA

Solar Edge Ltd.
Spiral Gateway Ltd.
Wireless Sound Solutions Pte Ltd. (trades as STS)
Virtensys Ltd.
Virtutech Inc.

Related articles:

Xilinx considers letting startups cobrand packaging

Synopsys will do less benchmarking

PicoChip set to close fifth financing round