Month: September 2013

I think I may have found my next job!  One of the possibilities I wrote about  last time was with a university professor who has developed a very interesting semiconductor-related technology that I think has huge potential. We have spent several hours on the phone and I just returned from a 3-day trip visiting him at his university.  I don’t want to provide any specifics until this is more certain but the situation is exactly what I’ve been looking for – except for the out-of-state location!

This technology has been under development for about four years and has recently been demonstrated with prototypes.  Upon publishing his results, the professor received a lot of media attention including main-stream outlets such as the BBC.  This in turn has caught the attention of many potential customers and partners and the professor quickly realized he needed to bring in a business partner to help get a company started and its strategy established.  He found me online and was attracted by my semiconductor technical and business experience, my open interest in working at an early-stage startup, and my willingness to take on a large degree of risk.  Over the course of several phone calls and the recent visit we have found our chemistry compatible and our talents complimentary. As a result we have expressed our mutual interest in working together.

My role would be as CEO of this new company while the professor’s would be as CTO.  Most of the early team members would come from the university and its associated research institution.  The company would be located at the professor’s location which is a little problematic for me. I am not interested to relocate to this location so will need to figure out how to make it work.  Over the next 4-8 weeks the professor and I need to continue to test our compatibility, nail down a first cut of a business plan, and work out the various details of my involvement.

I am very excited about this as it strongly aligns with what I have been seeking.  It gives me the opportunity to get in on something new right at the beginning of its commercial life and have a huge role in developing a new business, a new organization, and a new enabling product category.

Having said that, until this is finalized I’ll continue my exploration of other pending possibilities just in case.  However, I am putting my Bay Area trip on hold for now as that investment of time and money doesn’t make sense right now.

I’ll provide more details as this opportunity gets further developed and gets finalized.

Well, summer’s over and things have heated up quickly:

• Bay Area trip:  I’ve established contact with three VCs and two recruiters out there and am working my way through various introductory emails/calls.
• An entrepreneur I met last spring in the Cleantech Open competition introduced me to the CEO of his parent company in Israel.  This person was visiting Boston and was seeking to hire a general manager for the U.S. subsidiary of his measurement systems company.  I spent a couple hours with him learning about his company and the role he was looking to fill.  I ultimately decided not to pursue this opportunity due to the lack of a strong technology/product development component and also the relative maturity of the company and its commercial offerings.
• The founder of a startup I had several dealings with last spring contacted me with an intro to a friend seeking executive help for his wireless technology startup.  It’s not yet clear what sort of help this person is looking for but hopefully we’ll connect this coming week and see if there is any fit.
• I received a contact out of the blue from a professor at a U.S. university with a novel semiconductor technology.  He is seeking a business partner and found my profile on line.  The technology looks very interesting and promising and I’m looking to speak with this gentleman this coming week.
• I got together with the former colleagues I had written about previously for more brainstorming.  We focused in on three concepts.  One relates closely to what one of the guys is currently working on and may lend itself to a spinout.  The two other concepts are just at the “idea” stage and require further technical and market exploration.  We established actions for the group and will meet again in two weeks.
• I met again with the service business entrepreneur I had written about previously.  The purpose of this meeting was to share my feedback about his concept, to identify the primary challenges I saw, and to determine next steps.  Our key next step is to seek out meetings with a few organizations that are involved in similar services to gain insight as to how they deal with the challenges we’ve identified.

As can be seen I’ve shifted a great deal of attention to exploring new startup possibilities as opposed to finding existing ones.  That’s it for now, I’ll update things as they progress.