Needs of Global Start-up companies (Deliverable 2) GlobalStart wp1 Studies Deliverable 2 Needs of Global Start-up Companies Table of contents p
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- Pre-venture 2000 Foundation Mid 2000 – mid 2002 Change focus
- Technology platform Product Market
- 1 (c) The internationalisation process Know-how / technology
- 2. The university – support for Globalstart companies
- 3. The regional infrastructure – support for Globalstart companies
- Geo Info company Spin-off from Glamorgan
- 1 (a) Profile and background
- 1 (b) Mapping major milestones
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1 (a) Profile and background Hypertrust was founded in May 2000 by Maarten Willems, Peter Forret and Joris Winters. All of the founders graduated at the KULeuven and had some prior work experience in industry before setting up the company. Maarten Willems and Peter Forret both worked for the companies GlobalSign and Keyware Technologies where they acquired business experience in the fields of internet and internet security. Joris Winters accumulated some valuable experience on finance, investor relations, setting up companies, corporate and tax law via his prior work experience at Punch International and in the investment team of Fortis bank. Hypertrust cannot be considered as a real university spin-off as it did not result from research performed at the university. However, the company has the full support of the university and Leuven Research & Development (LRD) was involved in the start-up of the company. The founders contacted the university’s chancellor, Andre Oosterlinck, at the moment they planned to start up the company. The chancellor gave them his full support and brought them into contact with LRD. At the moment the founders of Hypertrust were working on the business plan, no technology was developed yet. Six months after foundation, funding was found. The 3 founders quit their job and started with the development of the service platform. The objective of HyperTrust was to be the first European Application Service Provider to develop a new internet platform for secured communications and transactions on the basis of digital signatures. In the original business plan 3 large domains of activities were defined: communication, storage and user-authentication. The founders decided to concentrate on the development of communication services. As they didn’t have any experience with international marketing, they focussed on the Belgian market. However, local competition from Belgacom appeared to be very tough and therefore, after 2 years it was decided to develop another domain of the business plan: storage. This market segment did not suffered from very strong competition. Paul Carpentier, who joined the management team mid 2002 was the key person for the integration and business development of these new storage related services. He was appointed as CEO of the company. Currently, Hypertrust is offering 3 major kinds of webbased services for secure data storage and communication. Pixagogo is an online photoalbum that can easily be shared with family and friends. Send2Store offers secure data storage and communication, long-term archiving and large data transfer. Staatsbladclip (Belgian Official Journal) is a showcase for internet based reliable storage. All services are based on an unique content referencing technology, which is an unique storage and retrieval method with origins in cryptography. The content addressing technology is licensed from EMC, a US company and global leader in information storage. The technology was built at FilePool, a company co-founded by Paul Carpentier and taken over by EMC. It consists of an e-clip, called Trustclip in the Hypertrust internet services, which is a unique figure derived from a document which indicates the location and the content of the document. Hypertrust built its service platform on this technology and applied for 2 patents. The company is principally focusing on end-consumers. At the moment it has users in more than 200 countries, with the majority of the users from the US. 1 (b) Major milestones
1 (c) The internationalisation process Know-how / technology Hypertrust is not an university spin-off. Business idea / know-how at foundation originated from the know-how and business experience of the 3 founders. The company can rely on an advisory board which is composed of 2 KULeuven professors, both internationally renowned experts in the field: Prof. Dr. Jos Dumortier from ICRI, expert in law and IT, Prof. Dr. Bart Preneel from COSIC, who focuses on cryptography and applications such as computers and network security. Paul Carpentier, who joined the company as CEO in 2002, had some prior experience with content networking technology and also co-founded FilePool, the company that developed the referencing technology used by Hypertrust. This unique reference technology developed by Filepool, is currently marketed by its acquirer, the American company EMC, a global leader in content addressed storage. EMC licensed the technology to Hypertrust. On this unique reference technology, Hypertrust has built a service platform. At the moment, two patents applications are in the running for this service platform. Capital There has been several capital rounds, however all with Belgian partners specialised in IT, internet business or technology firms. The 2nd and 3rd capital round also included some private investors who formerly also invested in FilePool. Those new investors were brought in by Paul Carpentier. In 2003, a capital subsidy has been acquired from IWT, the Flemish institute for science and technology. Networking AdValvas Group and IT-partners have been involved in the different capital rounds of Hypertrust. They gave strategic and commercial support to the company. AdValvas Group was a leading internet business generator on the Belgian market but went bankrupt in 2004. IT-partners is a Belgian VC fund focussed on IT. Both are/were Belgian companies. Paul Carpentier joined the company in 2002. He brought his knowledge of networked storage in the company but also his network. This network was very important for the Hypertrust project. Hypertrust is currently looking for more online marketing partners. Those are international players. Personnel The 3 founders had some prior business experience but their experience with international marketing was limited. Therefore they first chose to focus on the Belgian market, which appeared to be a wrong choice because the competition was too fierce for the communication application chosen. Paul Carpentier had some prior experience with setting up technology companies (Gnosis and Wave Research, later FilePool). Both were sold to major American companies. Market The first application of Hypertrust, secured communication was focussed on the Belgian market. However, the competition – one major player, Belgacom – was too fierce. The next application, secured storage, is focussed on the international market, principally to end-consumers and on-line communities (BtoC business). At the moment, the company has users in more than 200 countries, of which the majority is living in the US. The targeted market, on-line storage and storage as a utility, is a relatively little-developed market. Competitors are existing, but the market, especially the US market, is big enough for several competitors. The EU market is not so big and in this market it is more expensive to reach customers. For a small company as Hypertrust it is not possible to target a large market such as the storage of digital information. The company would not be able to build enough industrial capacity to compete in such an enormous market. 2. The university – support for Globalstart companies Hypertrust is not a university spin-off. LRD got involved because the founders asked and got the support of the KULeuven chancellor Prof. Dr. Oosterlinck. The latter is head of the board of directors of Hypertrust. 3. The regional infrastructure – support for Globalstart companies Hypertrust is one of the founding partners of L-Sec, Leuven Security Excellence Consortium. L-SEC is a non-profit network organization dedicated to promote the use and advance of e-security. L-SEC builds on a worldwide unique concentration of e-security expertise and e-security companies in the Leuven-Brussels region. It aims at establishing an international network of partners. Geo Info company Spin-off from Glamorgan
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Interview. Business plan under development to be submitted for capital increase in December 2004. Web site under development. For confidentiality reasons, the spin-off company is called “Geo Info”. As well the interviewee is referred to as the “Founder”. 1 (a) Profile and background Geo Info is a Geographical Information System (GIS) start-up operating in the Community Safety Applications (CSA) field. The Founder started at the University just over a year ago as a PhD student in the School of Computing. He brought industrial sponsorship to develop the research he was embarking upon in the area of CSA. This involves the monitoring of the domestic abuse of anti-social behaviour. The original idea for the start-up had arisen from work the Founder had undertaken at the County Council (CC). The GIS based framework was the Founder’s own idea which he had developed himself. After starting his research at the University the Founder approached the University Spinout Manager who was the representative for the Wales Spinout Programme located in the University Commercial Services Office (CSO). The CSA project was one of two projects the Founder was interested in developing. The other project involved work, also carried out at the CC, with the Head of the Research and Development (R&D) programme to develop salt on roads systems. This concerned vehicle tracking and when the Founder contacted and presented the Spinout Manager with an initial business plan the Spinout Manager advised against this project due to Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) problems and to concentrate instead on developing the business plan for the original start-up idea. Table 1 summarises the profile and background of the company. The GIS technology involved with the business idea is a spatial toolbox for analysing spatial events. Multivariate social statistics is one of the tools to help in the understanding of the specifics of social events. Through the application of this technology it is hoped to engage a number of clients with its use. In fact, one of the main clients currently being approached is the Local Police Authority (LPA).
With regard to community safety there is the tracking technology in the background. The Spinout Manager’s advice regarding this is that the Founder should develop this without the help of the Head of R&D at the CC. There are global aspects in the background and there is a unique selling point. For vehicle routing for gritting roads there is route optimisation and local authorities have a fleet of vehicles to do this. There are a number of factors involved such as temperature information and the best route to be taken. This is the “travelling salesman” type of problem. At the moment there is little technology that has been developed that can be patented. For crime and disorder evaluation there is a system which involves a holistic approach. This concerns analysis of disparate data sources for crime and disorder and is the area the Founder is researching for a PhD at the University. For the system to be a success there is the need for core data sets. With regard to this the Founder is trying to make an inroad into the market place to develop basic systems to develop more patentable technologies. By developing the basic systems they will become more unique and this will be supported by the results of the PhD research. There are customers interested in the developments taking place. The University research has industrial sponsorship. The business will benefit from support from the University and also customers. There are three clients at the moment and these are the CC, another client within the CC from a different budget centre and the LPA who are now interested in the developments that have taken place in the last three months. 1 (b) Mapping major milestones One of the early milestones has been the development of a business plan for Spinout Programme funding which took place in November 2004. The Spinout Group at the University will consider the plan at a meeting in December 2004 and following deliberations will decide whether to approve, request revision or disapprove. If successful the plan will be forwarded to Finance Wales for approval of the funding. The amount of funding provided will be of the order of £25,000. This will be a major milestone for the early development of the company. Having in place a “great” idea, the technology and a successful initial application the next milestone will be to develop the company over the next five years to a “critical” size. The ambitions of the Founder are therefore to have a viable business in five years time employing between 30 and 50 people. Table 2 provides a two dimensional overview of the major milestones.
With regard to networking since the Founder was the Corporate GIS Officer for the CC contacts are already in place. These have been built up over ten years of working in this environment and the Founder is therefore aware of the latest developments and who to contact. The Spinout funding will pay for a launch party of 200 to 250 people. Since micro businesses often fail due to the lack of a market there needs to be people who want to buy the product. By holding the launch party it will enable prospective customers to know about the company and the product. Directory: pub pub -> Project Scoring Template Pre-Construction Phase New Core/Branch Campus Projects pub -> Acm word Template for sig site pub -> The german unification, 1815-1870 pub -> Baltic Olympiads in Informatics: Challenges for Training Together pub -> Preparation of Papers for ieee transactions on medical imaging pub -> Forthcoming meetings and conferences pub -> Asilomar Conference on Circuits, Systems & Computers, Pacific Grove, ca, November 1978, pp. 55 58 pub -> Forthcoming meetings and conferences pub -> Harmonised compatibility and sharing conditions for video pmse in the 7 9 ghz frequency band, taking into account radar use Download 1.73 Mb. Share with your friends:
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