Thinking Differently: Informatics, Disruption and Entrepreneurship

Andrew Mitchell 27/10/2010 The WS Society

andrew.mitchell@ed.ac.uk 07793111386 @roomitchell

Disruption

VCs and Super Angels seek at least 10X RoI.

For this they need companies that disrupt industries and markets.

Disruptive Innovation

Informatics in Edinburgh

Scots inventiveness & the elusive software Co of Scale

Disruptive Innovation:Enabling a larger population of less-skilled people to do things usually performed by specialists; and do this quicker, faster and cheaper.

Informatics:- the study of how natural and artificial systems store, process and communicate information; a new enlightenment in scholarship and learning, central to the future of science, technology and society (CS, AI, CogSci).

In the age of information, computing technology is changing the ways we work and play. Informatics is changing the way we think.

Life as a model for compuation, computation as a model for life.

Informatics: thinking differently

Informatics: commercial applications

Informatics: commercial applications

Scale – Largest Computer Science research centre in Europe

More World Leading and Internationally Excellent Research than any other UK university (44% more than nearest competitor)

10% of all UK, World Leading research in 1 centre

470+ Academic and Research Staff

>250+ current PhD’s

160+ Masters level students

~190 1st year undergraduates

~100 Informatics BSc’s graduating each year

Excellence – Leads the UK in world leading research

Largest grouping of 4*, 69% more “World Leading” research than # 2

Rated ‘Excellent’ in SHEFC Quality Assessment for teaching

#1 in Guardian survey 2010 for teaching

Informatics in Edinburgh

726 students registered for this session including 333 students

from 60 countries outside the UK

People’s Republic of China - 39

Greece - 35 India - 30 USA - 29Germany - 29 Italy - 16 Poland - 16 France - 11 Bulgaria - 9

Republic of Ireland - 8 Mexico - 7 Pakistan - 6 Spain - 6 Netherlands - 5 Thailand - 5 Canada - 4 Lithuania - 4Colombia - 3

Malaysia - 4Luxembourg - 4 Nigeria - 3 Portugal - 3 Taiwan - 3Cyprus - 3 Japan - 3Austria - 3 Malta - 3

Belarus - 2 Estonia - 2 Romania - 2Denmark - 2 Israel - 2 Republic of Korea - 2 Singapore - 2 South Africa - 2 Sweden - 2

UK - 393

Czech Republic - 1 Finland - 1Belgium - 1Albania - 1 Australia - 1 Bahamas - 1 Bahrain - 1 Bangladesh - 1 Brazil - 1

Jordan - 1 Latvia - 1Indonesia - 1 Islamic Republic of Iran - 1 Lebanon - 1 Macedonia - 1 Mauritius - 1 New Zealand - 1

Sri Lanka - 1 Ukraine - 1 Venezuela - 1Russia - 1 Slovenia - 1 Turkey - 1 Uzbekistan - 1

342 Undergraduates 384 Postgraduate

Canada - 1Australia - 2 Chile - 1Argentina - 1

Colombia - 1People’s Republic of China - 7

Croatia - 1 Denmark - 1 France - 3 Germany - 16 Greece - 5 Hong Kong - 1

India - 6 Republic of Ireland - 1 Italy - 3 Japan - 1 Jordan - 1 Mauritius - 1

Netherlands - 3 Poland - 3 Portugal - 1 Romania - 1 Russia - 5 Slovenia - 1

Spain - 2 Sri Lanka - 1 Sweden - 2 Taiwan - 2 Ukraine - 1 USA - 23

UK - 201

Taught by the brightest and best from all over the world

So what!

Excellence in research and inventiveness of Scots

Yet no company of scale in informatics space

But! It’s changing.

University of Edinburgh:

Record-breaking 40 spinouts and startups in 2009/10

16 of which are from the School of Informatics.

33 School of Informatics spinouts/startups since 2006

Company creation progress:

10 year Targets - close to being hit within 4 years 2006-2010:

Spin Outs: 9 employees: 26 FTE

Start Ups: 24 employees: 56 FTE

Total: 33 employees: 82 FTE

Products developed 83

Spin out funding: £1.437M Revenue: £1.035M

Start Up funding: £3.165M Revenue: £0.884M

Total Funding: £4.602M Revenue: £1.919M

Entrepreneurship Education as a Contact Sport

Over 60 events and workshops Sep 2008 to Oct 2010.

Informatics Ventures has delivered 23,700 hours of executive entrepreneurship education to 853 participants from 547 companies.

6,000 focused interactions with 150 investors & serial entre’

techmeetup.co.uk

EDI / ABZ / GLA

Global

Entrepreneurship

Team

Engage

Invest

Exploit

girlgeekscotland.co.uk

Residential workshops

demoFEST

Research

Knowledge Exchange

Vendor Support

For Startups

e.g. Microsoft BizSpark

Sip / Selection of things Informatics Ventures organise or support:

Entrepreneurs in Residence: for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs

Ian Ritchie

Derek Gray

Crawford Beveridge

Gerry Docherty

Martin Ritchie

David Simpson

Colin Adams

David Milne

Annual Investor Conference: Engage Invest Exploit

75 companies have ‘exhibited’ across EIE ‘08, ‘09 and ‘10.

£11 million equity finance raised by these companies

16 companies pitched – raised £4 million

£2 million worth of deals directly attributed to intros at EIE

The opportunity we recognise (EIE’10 Informatics Forum, 12th May 2010)

"Scotland is number one in the world for research impact per GDP.

What do we do with the knowledge... we have a golden egg and we are ignoring it.”

Professor Anne GloverChief Scientific Advisor for Scotland

“And you have an opportunity (to build the ecosystem) in Edinburgh, there’s no question in my mind that is true. It’s a combination of having the academic excellence, having the local finance, having the entrepreneurs and having a global view of building business”

Anne M GloverCo-founder and Chief Executive Amadeus Capital Partners

Can Scotland Disrupt?

Andrew Mitchell 27/10/2010 The WS Society

andrew.mitchell@ed.ac.uk 07793111386 @roomitchell

Andrew MitchellInformatics Ventures

http://www.informatics-ventures.com/mobile: +44(0)7793111386e-mail: andrew.mitchell@ed.ac.uktwitter: http://twitter.com/roomitchell/