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jackOfManyTrades
To me (as an employee of a Japanese company of 15 years) the elephant in the ...
peter.clarke
EE Times' Silicon 60: Hot startups to watch
Peter Clarke
10/4/2012 2:00 PM EDT
E
Efficient Power Conversion Corp. (El Segundo, Calif.) was founded in November 2007 by three engineers with experience in advanced power management devices. EPC’s CEO, Alex Lidow, is the co-inventor of the HEXFET power MOSFET and, in addition to holding positions in R&D, and manufacturing, was the CEO of International Rectifier for 12 years. www.epc-co.com
Eight19 Ltd. (Cambridge, England), founded in 2010 as a spinoff from Cambridge University, is focused on the device designs and printing processes that enable solar cells to be made roll-to-roll using solution-based organic chemistry and room-temperature printing techniques. The company is named for the length of time it takes light to travel from the sun to Earth: eight minutes and 19 seconds. www.eight19.com
EnVerv Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), founded in 2009, is a fabless semiconductor company that offers power line communications ICs for metering and other control and monitoring applications. www.enverv.com
EoSemi Ltd. (Congleton, England) was founded in 2005 and has developed an all-silicon replacement for quartz crystal timing references with the potential to save space and cost in a variety of applications. www.eosemi.com
EpiGaN NV (Hasselt, Belgium) is a spinoff formed to commercialize a decade of research into compound semiconductors at IMEC. The company, formed in 2010, supplies Group-III-nitride epitaxial materials for electronic device manufacturing. www.epigan.com
G
GainSpan Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) is a developer of Wi-Fi sensor network technology. The company was an Intel incubator company before being spun out in 2006. It promotes a low power chip technology and integrated networking stack that allows Wi-Fi connections to be run from battery-powered systems and to target Internet of Things applications. www.gainspan.com
GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. (Beijing) is a fabless vendor of NOR flash memory founded in 2005. GigaDevice produces a wide range of SPI Flash, NOR multichip package and parallel Flash memories across various densities for embedded, consumer electronics, and mobile communications applications. www.gigadevice.com
H
Heliatek GmbH (Dresden, Germany) was formed in 2006 as a spinoff from the Universities of Dresden and Ulm. The company has developed organic solar cells from small molecule organic dyes that are chemically synthesized from hydrocarbons. The company has built an initial production facility in Dresden where it is using its technology to produce, flexible photovoltaic modules on a film substrate. www.heliatek.com
I
Imprint Energy Inc. (Alameda, Calif.) was founded in 2010 to commercialize a flexible, rechargeable battery technology developed by the company’s founders at the University of California at Berkeley. Imprint Energy’s polymer electrolyte technology is said to enable scalable, print-based manufacturing of energy dense and ultra-thin batteries based on non-lithium, earth-abundant materials. www.imprintenergy.com
InfiniLED Ltd. (Cork, Ireland) is a spinout from the Tyndall National Institute that was founded in 2010 and is an innovation development project and portfolio company of ScienceWorks Ventures, the Irish innovation hub of ScienceWorks Ventures. The InfiniLED technology includes a parabolic structure etched on the back of the LED die to focus the light generated into a collimated beam. www.infiniLED.com
Ingenic Semiconductor Co. Ltd. (Beijing), founded in 2005, is a provider of embedded CPUs. It has a low-power CPU architecture is called Xburst with a specialized pipeline engine. Ingenic chips have penetrated into the e-dictionary, personal media player, e-book and tablet computer markets. Ingenic is a licensee of MIPS Technology Inc. www.ingenic.cn
Intrinsic-ID BV (Eindhoven, Netherlands) was founded in 2008 as a spin-out of Royal Philips Electronics. It develops hardware-intrinsic security technology – also referred to as Physical Unclonable Function technology. The technology derives secret keys based on the die-specific characteristics of the silicon implantation, which can be considered a silicon biometric or fingerprint. Security is enhanced as no key is stored and there is nothing revealed in the power-down state. www.intrinsic-id.com
InVisage Technologies Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.) is a fabless semiconductor company developing QuantumFilm, an imaging-sensing technology that it claims will replace silicon. Its first product enables the high-resolution images from handheld devices such as camera phones and PDAs. Founded in 2006, InVisage Technologies is venture funded by RockPort Capital, Charles River Ventures, InterWest Partners, and OnPoint Technologies. www.invisageinc.com
Isorg SA (Grenoble, France), founded in 2010 as a spin-off from CEA-LITEN, converts plastic and glass surfaces into smart surfaces through the application of printed, organic optoelectronic sensors. The possibility of 3-D product integration allows the recognition of many shapes and form factors.The company name is a contraction of Image Sensor ORGanic. www.isorg.fr
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Javelin Semiconductor Inc. (Austin, Texas), founded in 2007, develops mixed-signal CMOS ICs for wireless applications and has developed CMOS power amplifiers for 3G cellular communications. www.javelinsemi.com
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Kalray SA (Orsay, France) is a startup company formed in 2008. Its technology combines parallel processor architecture called MPPA, for multipurpose processor array, and a parallel programming software development environment called MPPA AccessCore. www.kalray.eu
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sranje
10/4/2012 9:34 PM EDT
Very interesting - thank you Peter.
It seems that Power GaN (3 companies) and 60GHz wireless (3-4 companies) spaces dominate
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Azuretex
10/5/2012 1:00 PM EDT
Indeed interesting, and I have met a few.
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dasgeirsson
10/5/2012 1:37 PM EDT
It would be interesting to list out the dropped companies, and what happened with each of them!
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GREAT-Terry
10/5/2012 11:35 PM EDT
I also have interest to know which "dropped" company has now been acquired or moved to IPO. This shows how successful those startups are.
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peter.clarke
10/8/2012 10:32 AM EDT
While it is possible to go back to v13.0 and play spot the difference.
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fundamentals
10/8/2012 11:58 AM EDT
More than half the companies (32 out of 60) were founded in 2007 or earlier. There was a time when a start-up company was considered a dead-end after three or four years maximum. Perhaps something has changed in the past decade. Perhaps the VCs are more patient nowadays, or your list is highly skewed and it is not tracking the younger startups up close.
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peter.clarke
10/8/2012 1:08 PM EDT
@fundamentals
Things have changed in the last decade. It takes longer to get more complex technologies to market successfully.
The days of back-of-the-envelope business plan, $20 million invested, IPO and 10X ROI are said to be long gone.
VCs are not more patient but sometimes they are prepared to keep punting money if they think their proteges have a chance.
For the first few years of many startups' existence they say very little or nothing. Some don't have websites to avoid the risk of revealing anything. This, by definition, makes them companies that are difficult to watch.
But we do keep track of younger companies.
The other thing that is changing and has been remarked on many times is that VC money for semiconductor companies is increasingly scarse.
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rick.merritt
2/7/2013 12:07 PM EST
I have heard jokes in Silicon Valley for some time now about startups that are on funding rounds X, Y and Z ;-)
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docdivakar
10/18/2012 2:32 PM EDT
23 out of 60 are based in California! Nearly 40% of the startups. I wonder what the number was for 2011?
MP Divakar
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Bob @ JVD Inc.
10/23/2012 4:22 PM EDT
So when is a startup no longer a startup? Some of these companies got their start 5-6 years ago. Do you get to stay on the list until you get acquired or your investors finally give up?
Maybe you should consider doing an expose on mid stage companies.... separate from start-ups... Startups should have an expiration date... maybe 3 yrs from founding...
Bob @ JVD
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peter.clarke
2/8/2013 8:35 AM EST
Bob,
Three years is too short. Some companies don't have anything to say publicly after three years.
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Mayank.Agarwal
10/31/2012 12:20 AM EDT
Kudos to Indians working at Silicon valley.Almost in about half of the companies there is an Indian as founder or co founder.It would have been great had more companies from Bangalore would be there in this list but 2 are still there.
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Comfortable
2/6/2013 12:14 PM EST
You wrote, "To make way for newcomers, some companies have dropped off the list either because they have been acquired, moved on to an initial public offering of shares or have simply matured."
My question is, "Are there no dropouts due to failure?" That's astounding that EETimes is able to always pick 60 companies that never fail. VCs on the other hand fully expect over half their investments to fail. And most entrepreneurs will tell you that they learned more from failing than succeeding. At least in America, failure is not a dirty word. We should here about those stories as well if for no other reason than to know what didn't fly.
Also, I note that Quantance is on the list but not Nujira. Nujira is making substantially more progress in the exact same space with a substantially larger patent portfolio.
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peter.clarke
2/7/2013 10:06 AM EST
Nujira was a member of the Silicon 60 for a number of iterations.
As far as I remember the company was founded in 2002 and at 10 or 11 years old they are still private, but it is hard to class them as a startup.
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john.moor
2/8/2013 5:28 AM EST
Hi Peter: when is a start up no longer a start up? That's a good question as there are no hard or fast rules. As part of the semiconductor start-up alumni I tend to think of accession from the start up ranks is more about financial maturity than time measures... there's an argument to say that all the while a company is being funded (i.e. on the way to being profitable) then it could be classed as a start-up. Let's be realistic here - semiconductor start-ups are an endangered species for a number of reasons - not least because the old fabless model takes (on average) 10 years to get firmly off the ground... we've seen the evolution of new models in the past 6 or 7 years which seek to reduce investment and time scales and ultimately the risk to investment as a response. On the question of Nujira - I still class them as a start up. They've had an interesting journey which flies in the face of the trend. Whilst many investors are encouraging start ups away from the fabless model, in Nujira's case they were actively encouraged to go fabless! Hence they may be xx years old but their foray into the fabless start up land has been much more recent... so I class them firmly as a start up (oh and they've received money fairly recently and investing that in development).
Thanks for maintaining this list over the years - always of great interest.
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peter.clarke
2/8/2013 8:22 AM EST
Hi John
Interesting points.
However, I don't think we should just use startup as an alternative to privately-held or as a euphemism for "not-yet-commercially-successful"
Of course development timescales may differ by industry segment.
Certainly startups are often stealthy for a couple of years before they are even to start their tilt at the market.
There are some circumstances where engineers form a company....go away and do something else.....and only later start to develop their business. So you end up with X years of existence but only Y years of endeavor.
There are no hard and fast rules but i think it is hard to class a ten-year old company as a startup.
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Traces
2/6/2013 1:31 PM EST
Bob @ JVD:
A start-up is no longer a start-up when it reaches an exit: IPO, acquisition, or shut-down.
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Traces
2/6/2013 1:34 PM EST
@comfortable:
VCs claim to do greater than break-even on 30% of companies funded, but everyone expects this is closer to 10% in reality.
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smartbost
2/7/2013 9:43 AM EST
I don't know what criteria was used to determine these, but certainly there are a few that in my opinion are missing: Finsix (Boston, MA), and Arctic Sand being two of them
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yalanand
2/11/2013 3:28 AM EST
@smartbost, thanks for the info. If I am not wrong Arctic sand is spin-off of MIT ?
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peter.clarke
2/7/2013 10:07 AM EST
@Smartbost
Thanks for the tips
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yalanand
2/11/2013 3:27 AM EST
@Peter thanks for the compiled list. I am curious to know what is the criteria for start-up ? Do you consider a company which is started 8 years back as start-up ?
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toto555
2/12/2013 11:39 AM EST
Peter, what about Riviera Waves?
start-up developing WiFi 802.11 a, b, g and selling it as IP. OK, it's a spin-off (Indian design service) but they run in 100% start-up mode... and it look like they could be successful.
They are based in France, is it an issue? (joke)
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peter.clarke
2/13/2013 5:55 AM EST
@toto555
Thanks for the tip.
Being based in France is not an issue.
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jackOfManyTrades
5/2/2013 3:14 AM EDT
To me (as an employee of a Japanese company of 15 years) the elephant in the room is that there are no Japanese companies on the list; nor can I remember there ever being one; nor could I name a single Japanese startup, despite have visited about a dozen times.
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