IBM team checks out top Scots IT start-ups at EIE'11
Technology and business services company IBM will be running the rule over a group of Scottish start-ups this week for potential acquisition targets or business partners.
Deborah Magid, software strategy director in IBM's venture capital group, will be assessing 36 spin-outs from Scottish university computer science departments at the Engage, Invest, Exploit (EIE) conference hosted by Edinburgh University's Informatics Ventures unit.
Magid - along with Professor Henry Chesbrough, from the Haas Business School at the University of California, Berkeley - will also lead discussions about innovation at the three-day event, this week. On Thursday, eight of the start-up companies will pitch for funding from 100 potential investors, with the firms aiming to secure between £250,000 and £2 million each. IBM's venture capital group was set up in 2000 to find business partners or merger and acquisition targets.
Although the group puts a small amount of cash into investment funds, it does not pump money into early-stage companies, unlike rivals such as Intel. Instead, IBM provides free access to its software and other technology, as well as mentoring.
Magid said: "We're particularly interested in sectors such as healthcare, smart grids, banking and retail. We're also putting a lot of investment into analytics - especially to help companies make predictions about demand for their products and services - and into cloud computing."
One of the companies already partnering with IBM is Edinburgh-based Barrachd, which Magid praised for its work on business analytics, sifting through data for firms including Irn-Bru maker AG Barr.
Magid added: "There are a lot of
places in the world that you can visit where they're starting to get a
critical mass of entrepreneurship. But the thing that makes Edinburgh
and Glasgow so attractive is the eco-system - you need to have that
critical mass of great universities, corporations that are potential
customers, some investors like venture capitalists and the start-up and
spin-out firms. You need that mix to make a place attractive for these
kind of firms."
Magid - who had met venture capitalists from
Pentech and Scottish Equity Partners (SEP) in the autumn - also praised
the "informatics" work being done in Scotland, which brings together
traditional computing with studies of human behaviour and artificial
intelligence.
She said this combination was attracting attention from investors in the United States.
"That's an interesting approach that gives Scottish companies an edge when it comes to building software," she added.
Source : The Scotman 