By: Michelle Jane Stewart

CUE recently sat down for a chat with Dr Darrin Disley, CEO of Horizon Discovery Ltd, to gain some insight into his experience as a Life Science entrepreneur, his time with Horizon and his views on the future of entrepreneurship in Cambridge.

As a successful and experienced parallel entrepreneur, Dr Disley has been involved in the founding and growth of no less than ten high-tech business ventures. He is a Cambridge alumnus with a PhD in Biotechnology and has been an advisor on commercialisation strategies to key technology centres in Europe, USA, India and Africa. Arguably his most successful venture to date, Horizon Discovery Ltd, a translational genomics company based at the Cambridge Research Park, is one of the fastest growing biotech companies in Europe, having raised £14mil of equity investment, closed >£12mil in sales and returned £3.5 mil to founders and early investors. This included an 11x return on the initial seed investment from Cambridge Enterprise in 2010.

As a serial entrepreneur, you have founded a variety of companies in the past. Have you noticed any key factors that make certain companies turn out more successful than others?

I think there are many ingredients to a successful business but it almost always starts with a disruptive solution to a problem. In my experience, rarely are ideas truly disruptive, in other words exhibiting the potential to completely change the way we do things or view the world. Many innovators make the mistake of providing solutions to problems that either do not exist or do not have critical value to a clearly-defined market demographic. To me, identifying problems is the hardest and most important part! Once you have that sorted, you can begin to innovate, identify a platform, product or service solution and quantify your company’s value to investors and most importantly your customers.

It is crucial in any venture to assemble the right team of people who can deliver both the technology and product development plans within the context of a well-conceived and realistic business plan. At the end of the day, investors back people as much as, if not more than, any technology, product or service. Personally, I am looking for people who realise that customers should always be the focus of their efforts and placed at the centre of their business plan. When I invest in a start-up team, I need to make sure that they are passionate and able to go the distance but at the same time, I also need them to be pragmatic and honest with themselves – knowing when to change course or even stop is just as important as knowing when to persist and not give up. Additionally, I also look at their leader to see if they are able to sell the business, not just to investors, but to the rest of the team and to customers. A good leader will also be able to inspire his team to band together even in the face of adversity or setbacks.

Often, the hardest step for aspiring entrepreneurs is making the transition from a paper-based business plan to actually establishing the business. Has this been a problem for you and how do you know when to stop planning and start doing?

It is right to say that a business plan is only an initial sales and operational planning tool, and soon you will have to make the leap and actually get your hands dirty, to begin implementation.As for when to stop planning and start doing, once you have determined the key risk vs reward milestones it is time to push the pedal to the metal. It is essential not to enter what is known as analysis paralysis (i.e. thinking too much) or become gun shy, but to get out there and meet your future partners, customers and investors.

I do find it interesting that many aspiring entrepreneurs I talk to have plans only as far as developing their technology, validating it with a few early-adopter deals, and then sell it off as soon as possible to a larger player (invariably one located outside of the UK). The classical start-up route often builds on a period of technology transfer, textbook financing strategies and conservative business development. There is a fundamental misalignment between this model and how most entrepreneurs that I know think. I look to build businesses in the most capital efficient and non-dilutive (of equity) manner possible, getting ahead of the classical financing game and gaining early customer validation or even customer investment. This, I would argue, gives you the best chance of building a long-term sustainable business.

Horizon Discovery is arguably your most successful company to date, having raised £14mil of equity investment, close to £12mil in sales and returned £3.5mil to founders and early investors including an 11x return on the initial seed investment from Cambridge Enterprise all over the past 3 years. What has made Horizon Discovery so successful?

I think the management team’s ability to maintain enterprise control of the company has much to do with our success to date. We got ahead of the game by importing a US technology that had been built with >$50 mil of NIH funding; then by in licensing a range of derivative products made using this technology at Universities located around the world we were able to generate product and service revenue from day one.  This is quite unconventional and allowed us to demonstrate a proven track record when we went for larger rounds of funding. By bringing in corporate investors (Genentech and Roche) whose motives were grounded more in early technology access rather than early financial returns, we were able to keep close alignment of interest between the early shareholders, investors, and incoming investors (by insisting on only a single share class and the generation of a private market liquidity). This allowed the management team much more freedom in decision and deal making. It was a difficult path to take when easier investment was available and we had to operate under sub-optimal operational conditions for a long time (without a fancy building or the usual trappings of a well backed VC start-up).

Additionally, we owe our success to the vision, experience and pragmatism of our founder Dr Chris Torrance who managed to bring the right people together for the business. Acknowledging that his scientific background conferred limitations when trying to establish and build the business, he graciously allowed other people (including yours truly) to take control over the broader business strategy, scale-up and globalisation of the business. Since then, we have collectively built an entrepreneur-based management team with a vision of growing and sustaining a successful UK based biotech company.

Horizon and yourself via direct donations and support from Carpe Diem Trust, represent CUE’s biggest sponsors with £22,500 of support in 2011/12 (£100k over 5 years). You also put in a significant amount of your personal time to support CUE business plan training, judging and other events. What motivates you to support us and what value do you see in it?

There are many reasons why I support CUE, but is the  main aim is to support the next generation of young entrepreneurs, as I believe the future of our living standards, social cohesion and the UK’s broader standing in the world is dependent on their success in building the knowledge-based economy essential to deliver high levels of growth for the future.  I think it’s important to maintain a healthy entrepreneurial environment at the University and I want to create an environment of challenge and opportunity for the next generation of entrepreneurs by passing on my skills or helping out financially. My generation has funded our lifestyles on high levels of debt for 30 years, which is unsustainable in the long run and harmful to the prosperity of future generations. We cannot focus solely on selling services to each other, nor can we rely on a contracting industrial base grounded in a golden age long since gone. The UK must build businesses with non-organic growth potential (healthcare, cleantech & high tech) to ensure jobs and prosperity in the future. Developing and honing entrepreneurship as well as entrepreneurial talent is paramount. This is why we hire mostly young people at Horizon to give them a chance, train them well and provide them with long-term mentorship and opportunities to lead.

CUE and its members constantly strive to provide better support for aspiring entrepreneurs in Cambridge. Do you have any advice or suggestions on how we can improve in the future?

I think CUE has done a wonderful job over the years but there are definite areas for improvement. While presenting a well laid out business plan is important, care should be taken to balance the academic vs. translational training given. CUE needs to educate its members of the multiple purposes of the business plan competition, namely to take budding entrepreneurs through the process of writing a business plan; provision of a platform for expression and recognition of their future CEO potential and; and in rare cases, the opportunity to deliver on a real business opportunity, as Owlstone Nanotech and Cambridge Temperature Concepts have done in recent years.

Enlisting a larger number of entrepreneurs (as opposed to consultants) as mentors/judges, especially at the earlier stages of the competition, would be beneficial to this cause and should achieve a more diversified and “real-world” view point. Secondly, we should focus not only on the quality of the business ideas but also on identifying talented entrepreneurs who might not necessarily have the best idea at that time. This is the main reason I am sponsoring new prizes this year for the most promising general and biotechnology entrepreneurs.

This feature on Dr Disley can also be viewed at Business Weekly.

Here is the list of prizes we are giving out for the CUE £5K competition this year. We have many prizes to give out, worth over £40K, thanks to the generosity of our sponsors! Seize your chance to win!

• Up to five £5K winning teams across the four streams.
• One £7.5K prize for the best life science team
• Two £2.5K prize for the best entrepreneurs
• One Angel Prize
• One free place on Ignite program.

Special thanks to all our sponsors and collaborators: Horizon Discovery Ltd, Carpe Diem, EPSRC, RedGate Software, Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Science Park, Ensors, Cambridge IP, Center for Entrepreneurial Learning, Cambridge Enterprise.

Information about Ignite Program:

Ignite is an intensive, one-week training programme for aspiring entrepreneurs and corporate innovators to trial and prepare business ideas for the commercial environment. Comprised of a blend of practical teaching sessions, expert clinics, mentor sessions and experienced advice and support from leading entrepreneurs and innovators, it will give you the tools, contacts and confidence to transform your idea into a successful business project or venture. Ignite attracts a diverse range of projects which can be broadly categorised as being from the high-tech sector or life sciences sector. The next programme runs from 1^st to 6^th July 2012.

CfEL is offering one free place to a winner of the CUE £5k Business Creation Competition.  Ignite is designed for people with technology related business ideas.  The winning team should select one person to take up the free place and this person should complete our online application form www.cfel.jbs.cam.ac.uk/programmes/ignite/form_apply.html  Please contact Frances Bycroft, Programme Manager, via ignite@jbs.cam.ac.uk if you have any questions.

Thank you to all those who took part in CUE’s £5K training! We hope that the session gave you a better understanding of the different aspects of a business plan and we wish that you can translate this knowledge into winning entries in our 5K Challenge.

If you would like to refresh yourself on the various talks, you can download the audio recordings and slides from the links below.

Audio:

Talk 1: What a judge expects to see in the £5K competition.

Talk 2: Conducting effective market research.

Talk 3: Dealing with general legal issues.

Slides:

Talk 1: What a judge expects to see in the £5K competition

Talk 2: Conducting effective market research

Talk 3: Financing your business

Talk 4: Dealing with general legal issues

Talk 5: Intellectual property

Follow the easy steps below to find a mentor for your team.
Step 1: Decide that you will enter the CUE £5K competition.
Step 2: Write a short summary of your business idea (around 100 words)
Step 3: Decide what kind of expertise in a mentor that you are looking for (Market research, Finance, Legal Issues, IP or others)
Step 4: Send your short summary with the requested mentor specialty to competitiondirectors@cue.org.uk
Step 5: CUE will pair you up with a mentor whose specialty matches your requests.
Step 6: Write to the mentor and arrange a convenient time and venue for your meeting.

“The kudos endemic in startup competitions carries an equally important payback to any cash prizes, the keynote speaker told Cambridge University Entrepreneurs’ £1k winners.

Professor Ian White, from the university’s Department of Engineering, said that while CUE had awarded over £500k in prize money to more than 40 start-ups since 1991 there was far more to winning than the cash….”

Want tips on developing an outstanding business plan?

Join us at our training sessions and learn from the pros!

Session 1

When: Wednesday 7th March 2012, 18:30 – 21:30

Where: Lecture Room 4, Department of Engineering,

University of Cambridge, CB2 1PZ

Session 2

When: Friday 16th March 2012, 14:00 – 17:00

Where: LT1, Judge Business School,

University of Cambridge, CB2 1AG

REGISTER HERE: http://cue5ktraining2012.eventbrite.com/

The stakes are running high as we approach the final stage of CUE’s series of business creation competitions – the £5K Challenge. Entrants for the £5K Challenge are required to submit a 2000 to 3500 word business plan by the 27th of April. It is not required to have been an entrant or winner of the £100 for 100 words or £1K Challenge to participate in the £5K Challenge.

In line with the greater demands of this stage of the competition, CUE will be running two training sessions to give you the opportunity to pick up the skills you need to come up with a winning entry.

For Session 1, CUE has invited a series of experts from serial entrepreneurs to lawyers and financial gurus to cover all the aspects involved in a complete business plan. Not only will you get the chance to hear from these experts, you will also be able to get personalized advice for YOUR business during the surgeries.

Speakers for the session include:

Ted Dewhurst

Principal at Kesteven Law with extensive experience in dealing with venture capital and private equity transactions, as well as commercial agreements

Ilian Iliev

Serial entrepreneur and current CEO and co-founder of CambridgeIP with experience ranging from medical diagnostics to the electrical industry

Simon Anderson

Chief Strategy Officer for Green Energy Options

James Francis

Director at Ensors

Mentors for the surgeries include:

Daniel Paterson

Individual winner of 2012 Manufacturing Leadership 100 award in the Advocacy category, alongside famous inventor James Dyson

Angelo Mastrogiovanni

Senior project manager for FABCP Consulting, who will focus specifically on implementation of business plans

Schedule for Session 1

1800-1830    Registration
1830-1850    Talk: How to write a winning business plan
1850-1910    Talk: Conducting effective market research
1910-1930    Talk: Financing your business
1930-1950    Talk: Dealing with general legal issues
1950-2010    Talk: Intellectual property management
2010-2130    Personalized surgeries and networking

In Session 2, we will have one of our competition judges, Dr Darrin Disley, to give tailored advice to the participants through 1-2-1 surgeries. Darrin will meet with individual teams for 30 minutes each to give his thoughts on their business ideas and how they should carry their ideas forward to the 5K competition and beyond.

To register, e-mail nicholas.tan@cue.org.uk with the subject “5K training – Session 2″ and state your team name, one preferred time slot (14:00-14:30, 14:30-15:00 etc), one alternative time slot and the names and phone numbers of the members that will be attending the surgery.

Spaces are HIGHLY LIMITED, so ACT NOW!

Exciting news has just come in from the technology community!

On the 22nd of February, Rapportive formally announced that it has been acquired by LinkedIn. While no official figures have been announced, technology analysts estimate the deal to be worth around US$15 million.

CUE wishes to extend our heartiest congratulations to former CUE president and current CEO of Rapportive, Rahul Vohra. After his time at Cambridge, Rahul co-founded and was involved with a number of start-ups, including Rapportive, a Gmail plugin which consolidates and displays the latest social networking updates from people you contact via email.

This serves as a true inspiration to all the budding entrepreneurs in Cambridge and beyond, and shows how CUE can help you achieve your entrepreneurial dreams!

Read more here and here

By Nicholas Tan

Over 150 people gathered at the Wolfson lecture theatre last night to listen to business ideas of some of the brightest young minds Cambridge has to offer at Cambridge University Entrepreneurs’ (CUE) £1k awards ceremony.

Last night’s event marked the close of CUE’s £1k business plan sub-competition, which required entrants to submit executive summaries of their business ideas in not more than 1500 words. This year’s competition received an unprecedented number of entries, which more than doubled the number from last year. Despite the large increase in quantity, David Gill, Managing Director of St John’s Innovation Centre and one of the competition judges, was quick to point out that the quality of the submissions remained impressive.

The event was kicked off with a keynote speech from Prof Ian White, master of Jesus College, who highlighted CUE’s business plan competition as a key part of the University’s efforts to support entrepreneurship at various levels, be it spin-outs, spawn-outs or snuck-outs.

Ready, get set, pitch! The exciting and fast-paced pitching segment allowed participants up to 75 seconds to share their business ideas, which ranged from designer genetic solutions to a device that allows for advertising on bicycle wheels. Participants used a variety of techniques to capture the attention of the audience during their 75 seconds of fame, including the use of videos, props and even a live demonstration of their technology.

As the pitching session drew to a close, we reached the climax of the night, where the £1k award winners were announced. This year saw an unprecedented number of prizes being handed out, with 7 winners, 8 runner-ups, as well as prizes for the best pitch and best poster. In total, over £7000 in cash and over £11000 worth of patent database subscriptions were handed out to our winners.

The award winners of this year’s £1k business plan competition are:

£1k prize winners: Cambridge Biocompatibility, CamPores, RealiaWind, Old Bond, Wedu, Green Tutor, Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions

£1k runner ups: Cambridge Stem cell Systems, Heliomobil, TPS Limited, Shuruat Mobility, Simple Tax Calculator, Collide, Hopskip, VocallQ

Best pitch: Cedric Deur representing StuStu

Best poster: Self-Cervix

As the participants look towards the upcoming £5k business plan competition and beyond, John Bird, founder of The Big Issue, encouraged them to pay greater attention to their presentation skills and to show greater enthusiasm and clarity when pitching their ideas, which will be important when seeking investor funding for their businesses.

Also, Dr Andy Richards, founding member of the Cambridge Angels and serial entrepreneur, urged participants to think about whether they just want to win the business plan competition or to actually start a business. If they seek the latter, he cautioned that a considerable amount of effort is required to implement a business plan and bring it to fruition.

We hope to see more brilliant and exciting entries in our £5k competition, which opens on the 7th of March.

CUE would like to thank our generous sponsors for their support, without which this event would have never been possible.

Gold sponsors: Horizon Discovery, EPSRC, Carpe Diem, ARM

Silver sponsor: Redgate

Bronze sponsors: Cambridge Science Park, Ensors

We would also like to thank CambridgeIP for sponsoring the patent database subscriptions.

The winners of the Cambridge University Entrepreneur’s £1K challenge are (in no particular order):

Cambridge Biocompatibility

Cambridge Biocompatibility is developing new bio-compatible coatings for all forms of orthopedic and prosthetic surgery that will increase the lifetime by at least a factor of five and reduce recovery and aftercare costs by a factor of 10. Total product lifetime savings will be the major pricing driver for this new portfolio of biocompatible coatings. We are requesting £100,000 venture capital and expect a company valuation of £60million within 5 years.

CamPores

Ultracapacitors and pharmaceutical filters underlie very different industries, but are the most promising applications of our technology – a method to produce a novel nanoporous material. The manufacturing process is cheap, quick and easily scalable and the pore size can be reliably tuned from 5-100nm with a high degree of uniformity across the substrate. In polymeric form, the substrate has already attracted interest from leading filtration companies. As a porous metal-oxide, it will be a key component of hybrid ultracapacitors, a fast growing industry with applications in grid management and hybrid cars.  Other applications include fuel cells and enhanced Lithium-ion batteries.

RealiaWind

Reliability is vital in the growth of the wind industry, especially offshore, and to realise EU’s targets for 2020. ReliaWind has developed a novel and patent-pending condition-monitoring system for wind turbine drivetrains, enabling 40% reduced maintenance cost for offshore installations. The product, comprising a number of sensors and the analysis hardware/software, offers straightforward retrofit into new wind tur-bines as well as existing ones. This is a relatively new market and we expect to take a 5.5% market share by 2017, equivalent to installation onto 2500 turbines per year, generating revenues of £60 million.

Old Bond

We are a start-up offering the world’s first spinning animated ads on bicycle wheels; a real breakthrough in outdoor advertising. Being environmentally friendly, we will use an innovative system, Video Pro, to transfer video-clips, images and animated logos from a computer onto the bike wheels. With such new technology transforming a bike into a work of art, drivers can run an ad on any path or put it at some popular spot around the city. It would be hard to create better advertising for businesses, concerts, festivals or cultural events than eye-catching ads on running or stationary bikes.

Wedu

Local leadership is critical for local development. Wedu provides education financing options and mentorship for underprivileged university students with high leadership potential in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), especially girls. We seek to initiate a positive cycle of building and developing local leadership talent by identifying students committed to working on local issues, helping them to complete university and giving them access to a global network of mentors. When students return to serve their communities, they become mentors to other future leaders while repaying the financing received into a revolving fund to serve more students.

Green Tutor

GreenTUTOR provides a platform for online training. We focus on the sustainable built environment. Market research indicates rapid growth of the £9bn global e-learning market of which our target segment –e-learning teaching– showed the highest growth. GreenTUTOR has access to over 350 researchers and professionals in the area of sustainable development through an established network (www.greenbridge.org.uk), which will be our starting point to enter this market. Thanks to easy access to Ivy League Tutors, we benefit from low barriers to entry. Our proposed tuition service, flexible, virtual, one-to-one and multilingual, enables global outreach and thus high-growth rates for this venture.

Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions

Video data is increasingly used for research, performance analysis and documenting personal events. More than 48 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube every minute. Cambridge Interactive Video Solutions uses interactive video segmentation technology developed at the CUED to provide tools for cutting out objects in videos with arbitrary backgrounds, and analysing their properties. Revolutionary machine learning algorithms progressively understand the need of the user from only a few mouse strokes. Cut-outs are used for scientic studies: animal behavioural studies, live cell image sequence analysis, performance analysis of sportsmen: pose, motion patterns, general public video editing applications: object removal, enhancement, annotation.

The runners-up of the Cambridge University Entrepreneur’s £1K challenge are (in no particular order):

Cambridge Stem cell Systems

Cambridge Stem Cell Systems will become the major supplier of custom-made human brain neural stem cells and functional neural tissues to academia, biotech and pharmaceutical industries. We will provide solutions to establish patient cell-based systems for brain disease modeling and drug screening by 1) generating a collection of patient-derived neural stem cell lines from common neurological disorders, such as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s diseases, and produce stem cell lines of rare diseases on demand; 2) producing optimized neural stem cell culture reagents and tools to suit the research; 3) providing consulting services to help design patient cell based drug discovery platforms.

Heliomobil

Heliomobil makes affordable solar-tracking heliostats that are designed with the goal of increasing the yield of residential and small-scale commercial solar energy collection systems. Heliomobil’s core product supplements marketed solar collection technologies, enabling them to significantly accelerate return-on-investment through increased sunlight availability.

TPS Limited

With the development of more advance tablet coatings, there is an urgent need for stricter control over tablet coating thickness and evenness which can only be achieved with better analytical equipment. Terahertz-based imaging devices have recently been developed for studying pharmaceutical tablet coatings. These devices enable continuous, on-line monitoring of tablet coating thickness during the coating process, and can be fitted to existing manufacturing equipment without modifications. These benefits make them superior to currently utilized methods. As such, these devices will be able to rapidly penetrate the US$2.2 billion pharmaceutical analytical equipment market.

Shuruat Mobility

Launched in 2011, Shuruat is working in the field of product, service and delivery model design and innovation to target large, under-served segments at the bottom of the pyramid. Our first initiative, Shuruat Mobility, is focused on the design, development and marketing of an ecosystem of innovative assistive mobility devices, specialised educational programmes and micro-financing services for the physically disabled across rural India, Africa and the Middle-East, with the objective of delivering income generation opportunities and financial independence to them in a sustainable and scalable manner.

Simple Tax Calculator

Running a small business is difficult, and keeping records of sales and expenses over multiple years is time consuming. Business owners want to spent as much time as possible on their business and as little as possible on record keeping.
The Simple Tax Calculator is a convenient, easy to use tax calculation system that allows sole traders to keep a running total of their tax liability throughout the year.
This solution will revolutionise the way small businesses manage their records, keeping all the required information in one place, and allowing you to plan your tax liability year round.

Collide

Winners of the Silicon Valley comes to the UK Cambridge Appathon, Collide creates new ways for friends to meet and interact by bringing Mobile, Local and Social together. Collide is a mobile application which tells you when your friends are close and suggests nearby places to hang out and grab a coffee, and as an added sweetener Collide also provides the user with money off vouchers for their favourite social spots.

Hopskip

HopSkip connects people when people want to be connected. HopSkip revolutionises how and when people are able to use their mobile phones. It does this by tunnelling connections through the latent mobile phone network on unused and available radio frequency bands. HopSkip utilises software embedded within the mobile phone to search, identify and connect to other roaming mobile phones until a connection with a network provider is achieved. As long as other mobile phones are in the vicinity and are HopSkip enabled, a connection through the latent mobile network to the real network will be established. This technology extends the coverage of existing networks substantially, allowing phone signals to be transmitted down into the London Underground, into concrete buildings and down alleyways. It also extends the boundaries of existing cell-sites considerably. Digital information literally hops and skips through other users mobile phones.

VocallQ
VocalIQ will become the leading provider of voice interfaces for computer systems. By using novel statistical models of dialogue, VocalIQ can dramatically improve the performance of voice-based systems. Possible applications include automated call centres, mobile applications and car-navigation systems.

Well done everybody! Look forward to receiving your entries in the £5K competition.