Hello Suyash,
On 29 December 2015 at 01:07, Suyash Sumaroo <suyash_at_codevigor.com> wrote:
> Hi Stephen,
>
> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 12:31 AM, Stephen Naicken <
> stephennaicken_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>> Of course, my background perhaps leads to a bias view that the government
>> needs to harness the R&D from Universities and private entities. I have
>> worked on an academic research project that was spun-off to become a
>> startup. I would certainly encourage those looking to start-up or
>> starting-up. I found it an interesting experience and I'd expect others
>> would too.
>>
>
> This is quite interesting. It is a different route to setting up a startup
> but which I believe can be very successful. I would really like to know
> more about it from you.
>
My experience of this was not in Mauritius, so it is probably not relevant
to the Mauritius startup scene or this mailing list. It's also a little
long.
I was a Research Fellow at Sussex University and I was working on a project
that was investigating poor mobile connectivity in crowded areas. The
motivating example for this was football stadia, where connectivity often
degrades dramatically at kick-off, half-time and full-time - essentially
when demand is high. Obviously, this makes it difficult to deliver a
"connected stadium" experience. Fortunately, across the road from the
University, there was a ~30k seater football stadium.
The football club bought into the project not only because of the business
possibilities from such a solution, but also because it was good PR to be
working with the local university. The fans saw it in a similar light too,
not just as a means to access networked services during the match, but to
also help their club.
With the club and fans onboard, a user-centred approach was adopted to
develop the mobile application to allow users to access club services when
at the stadium - even in the absence of a mobile data connection. Some of
the technical details can be found here [1] [2].
Once the project ended and it was clear there was a market, a startup
venture was created to exploit the technology. The IPRs (to the source and
the patents) were held by the University, so licence agreements had to be
drawn up. Equity was also another issue that had to be overcome. Whilst
the University had clearly defined policies and structures (e.g Sussex IP
[3] and the Innovation Centre [4]) in place to assist with the process,
there was still a short negotiation period before the details were
finalised.
I left the venture once the research phase was complete and product
development became the priority. However, I can conclusively say that
without the EPSRC [5] funding and the University, the project would have
been a lot more complex to execute. Being part of the University brought a
degree of trust to our interactions with football clubs, the Football
League and other entities. It opened doors that would probably have
remained shut. During the research stage, the university allowed for an
environment where failure was an option - we were not subject to external
commercial pressures from angels or VCs. Expensive and important costs,
such as the patent costs, were paid for by the University.
Unfortunately, when I read the papers, I rarely read anything positive
about the UoM or UoT. Most of the column inches are dominated by
maladministration or the cafeteria. There are, however, some academics
trying to engage in some very research with real-world applicability [6],
so there is potential for similar environment to exist here.
Both you and Yuv, talk about a lack of seed-funding. I would be interested
to know some more details about this. How much money is typically
available to early-stage startups and how much equity is expected in
return? Are there incentives for investors, such as SEIS [7] in the UK?
Are the investors generally local, Mauritians residing abroad, or foreign?
Let's assume private investors in Mauritius are risk-averse, reluctant to
invest in projects in startups. Shouldn't the government be filling this
void? This could be thought of as a Keynesian economic approach to our
degree-educated, youth unemployment problem. Maybe one possible model is
where the university not only acts as a conveyor belt of talent, but also a
hub where entrepreneurs can collaborate with researchers to accelerate
projects. Talent and money flows from the university and government,
respectively, whilst equity heads in the other direction.
[1]
http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/46819/1/paper.pdf
[2]
https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/4841-4841
[3]
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/staff/research/contractsandip/ip
[4]
http://www.sinc.co.uk/
[5]
https://www.epsrc.ac.uk/
[6]
http://www.lemauricien.com/article/union-europeenne-horizon-2020-ict-39-call-quatre-bornes-invitee-etre-smart-city
[7]
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/seed-enterprise-investment-scheme-background
Regards,
--
Dr. Stephen Naicken, BSc (Sussex), MRes (Sussex), Ph.D (Sussex)
Visiting Research Fellow
Department of Informatics
University of Sussex
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/snaicken
Twitter: _at_stephennaicken
Received on Tue Dec 29 2015 - 15:24:35 PST