> 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.
This is true. And failing probably will have your chance to obtain
investors be less likely. But maybe you would not fail if, in the first
place, you had the necessary facilities including finance. Well personally,
i dont mind failing as i mentioned previously. I'll keep on trying for as
long as i can (until i'm still young). Failures are a part of life. If you
don't fail, you don't learn. If you don't learn, you'll never change. Even
trying and failing is still better than not trying at all. We learn from
our failures, and failing to try is the biggest failure of all. I can
accept failure but I cannot accept not trying
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, :-/
Exactly my experience. As i mentioned earlier "There is probably smeda
which would fund me but i guess for this to happen i'd have to already have
my application/website up and ready for business, right?" So this means i
should have my business up and running then only they will invest. But at
this point what's the use of investors? There are no great competition
among startups in Mauritius that you will need investors (to keep you in
business) once you are already making profits with your business.
Let's assume today i come up with an idea to create an application for
hotel booking online. I start making all the necessary to setup my business
with Registrar of Companies, register with SMEDA. At this point i have
nothing apart from a company on my name. Now i need to start creating my
application and in the meantime I also start looking for potential
investors. I approach an investor with nothing but a business plan he would
probably refuse to invest. The latter would want to atleast have the
business up and already dealing with clients and making some money. Right
Suyash?
On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 10:14 PM, Suyash Sumaroo <suyash_at_codevigor.com>
wrote:
> 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
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> Thanks & Regards,
> *Suyash Sumaroo | Director*
>
>
>
> Ebene Accelerator, Ebene *|* Tel: (+230) 54912170
> <%28%2B230%29%205491%202170>
>
> Email: suyash_at_codevigor.com *|* Web: <http://goog_2022637622/>
> www.codevigor.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
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Received on Tue Dec 29 2015 - 19:41:45 PST