CUTalks by CUTEC

This week on #CUTalks we are talking to Carlene Jackson, CEO of Brighton-based tech company Cloud9 Insight. Carlene established her first business aged 17 and then spent nearly two decades in the software industry before going it alone to take advantage of the booming cloud technology sector. Cloud9 Insight is a Microsoft Gold Partner which has provided more than 700 UK businesses with cloud-based CRM software systems. Founded in 2010, the company has 30 staff and is also an award winning provider of training and apprenticeships programmes which it runs through its sister company, Vantage Academy.

This week on CUTalks we are talking to Yasrine Ibnyahya, director of advanced concepts and technologies at Inmarsat. She has done an MBA at the Cambridge Judge Business School. Yasrine talks about her experience being an intrapreneur in the satellite industry and mentor to women in the industry. She also shares her portfolio-based strategy for championing innovative projects within the company to manage risk. Yasrine highlights some of the differences in creating innovation between large companies and startups. She gives advice to aspiring entrepreneurs who are still early in their career.

This week at CUTalks, we are talking to Stephen Lile, co-founder and general partner of Oxbridge Angels, a recently founded early stage fund with a focus on Deep Tech and Life Sciences. The firm is made up of Cambridge EMBA and MBA students, with other investors as Limited Partners. Stephen started his career as an investment banker, became serial entrepreneurs (started 4 companies) and moved to academia upon doing master study at the University of Oxford, EMBA in Judge Business School and now as a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. Stephen shares some of the harsh lessons about entrepreneurship that he has personally experienced, and several tips and tricks on human and financial capital management that every startup founder should master. He emphasises the importance of being resilient as most of the time, the odds of success is against most founders.

What does it take to commence a successful biotechnology start-up? What risks are involved as a private equity investor? How can one manage and offset the risks of cashflow and company control vis-à-vis founders possessing controlling shareholdings? Hear from Dr William H. Janeway, a private equity giant from Warburg Pincus and University of Cambridge, Faculty of Economics lecturer. This is a recording from a live webinar event that took place on 12th June 2020. Content: During this webinar, Bill discussed the economics of innovation as illustrated by the founding of Life Technologies and resolution of the ‘Biotechnology Paradox’. Bill delved into the risks associated with investing as a private equity investor in this industry and the substantial growth in the number of pharmaceutical and biotechnology IPOs in the US. Format: Opening remarks were provided by Bill. Pre-submitted questions from our audience were then asked and further questions submitted via the online platform ‘Menti’ were welcomed on the topic. This event was organised by CUTEC and CUVCPE societies as part of the ongoing ‘CUTalks by CUTEC’ podcast series. The hosts for the webinar were Shreya Singhal and Shelby Newsad. To find other podcast episodes, visit here: https://cutec.io/cutalks. Follow us @CUTEC, #CUTalks and @CUVCPE on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook to find out about future events and podcast episodes.

#CUTalks by CUTEC has just launched a new mini-series: Female Founders in the Spotlight. This series has the aim of increasing visibility of female founders of early-stage startups. To launch the series, Shreya Singhal and Thomas Bohné have been talking to Urshita Gautam, co-founder of Revive Innovations. The company is developing a patent-pending adrenaline auto-injector that is half the size of available devices, more discreet and incorporates design features for better performance. Urshita talks about the importance for every company to adopt a user-centric design approach in order to develop products that fulfill the customers’ needs. She provides some practical agile product development advice, especially for companies who are operating in the medical technology space.

#CUTalks by CUTEC has just launched a new mini-series: Female Founders in the Spotlight. This series has the aim of increasing visibility of female founders of early-stage startups. To launch the series, Shreya Singhal and Thomas Bohné have been talking to Lucy Jung, founder and CEO of Charco, a medtech start-up working on a device for people with Parkinson's disease to improve their quality of life. Charco is currently testing a vibrotactile stimulation device, and have received positive feedback from participants about how the product helps improve their movement and coordination. Lucy shares some stories about her early experiences with the startup and some of the challenges that they are currently facing. She also discusses her team’s efforts in helping NHS dealing with Covid-19.

This week we are talking to Daniel Rooke, co-founder, partner and head of legal at StartCodon, the Cambridge healthcare and life sciences accelerator. Daniel speaks about his experience working in both large companies and startups, which aspects are similar and different. He also emphasizes the importance for founders to critically think about what they really want and need when finding accelerators to work with.

Given the current Covid-19 pandemic, everybody is reaching out more to people in their personal and professional networks, and so we thought we would do the same. We have been catching up with founders who we have previously had as guests on the podcast, to find out what they have been up to since our recording with them and how they are being affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. The founders featured on this episode are: Alex Murray, Flit Nisarg Mehta, Vector.ai Helene Guillaume, WILD AI

#CUTalks by CUTEC has just launched a new mini-series: Female Founders in the Spotlight. This series has the aim of increasing visibility of female founders of early-stage startups. To launch the series, Shreya Singhal and Thomas Bohné have been talking to Jennifer Jia, founder of Emporsand, a company empowering women through access to sanitation as featured on the BBC. They are repurposing waste cuts of clothing into sanitary towels and making them accessible to women in poverty. We met Jennifer at the EnterpriseTECH and EnterpriseWOMEN at the Judge Business School. Jennifer speaks about the scale of the problem that Emporsand is tackling and the challenges that her company faces in developing a sustainable business model to solve this issue. She also highlights the need for investors and the public in general to appreciate that the lack of sanitation towels are not just problems for women but also the wider society.

#CUTalks by CUTEC has just launched a new mini-series: Female Founders in the Spotlight. This series has the aim of increasing visibility of female founders of early-stage startups. To launch the series, Shreya Singhal and Thomas Bohné have been talking to Nicola Filzmoser, co-founder of Happyr Health, a mobile game based on cognitive behavioral therapy, to help children cope with recurring migraines. We met Nicola at the EnterpriseWOMEN program at the Judge Business School. Nicola is pursuing a Master of Entrepreneurship at Cambridge while working on Happyr full-time. She shares about her personal experience dealing with migraines when she was young and the lack of proper solutions made available to her. Happyr Health have launched a crowdfunding round, initial target of £10k which has been increased to £14k after rapidly reaching their initial target.