Hi Stephen
>
> 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 already guessed that your experience was not in Mauritius, :-)
>
> 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.
>
You lucky dude. You had the opportunity to work on a new tech connected
with football (even if it was a football stadium) - 2 things I am
passionate about, :-)
>
> 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.
>
This is interesting in that this was a win-win situation for everyone,
university, the stadium and the researchers.
>
> 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].
>
I am currently going over the papers and will get back to you if I need any
details, if ok with you of course.
>
> 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.
>
This is actually what is so lacking in Mauritius - processes to ease these
kind of ventures. Unfortunately, I do not think that this is going to
happen soon enough.
>
> 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.
>
A very important point you mentioned is the ability to fail. In Mauritius,
this is frowned upon. Failure is considered as a bad thing and not really
as an opportunity to learn. I think this is also a cultural thing but which
I hope is going to change in the near future.
>
> 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.
>
Yes, that is true, and something that may be interesting too. If there is a
problem, then there is an opportunity for a solution. I think I am going to
propose them my cloud solution for document management (www.document.mu) -
let's see how this goes.
>
> 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?
>
Personally, I think that seed funding is nearly non-existent in Mauritius.
I do not even expect or try to secure any seed funding. My aim currently to
fund my present projects but 2 of the private institutions I went to see
for investment want the service to start making money first and then they
might consider investment, :-/
>
> 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.
>
Let's hope this happens in the near future. As of now, the void is there
and we are currently wallowing in it.
I think what you shared here is very interesting. I would really like to
learn a bit more from your experience. The ways to apply this experience
will surely be different in Mauritius but I think that we can benefit from
this kind of knowledge and experience. I also hope that we can share on our
end too.
>
> [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
>
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Received on Tue Dec 29 2015 - 18:15:19 PST