Realizing the next growth wave for semiconductors A new approach to enable innovative startups

The semiconductor industry has evolved from its early days of startups and spinouts financed by venture capital to an era of specialization associated with the rise of foundries and fabless companies to today's structure characterized by consolidation and dominance by a few leaders in each of the product areas. Looking forward, there is personal health care, autonomous transportation, mobility, and home automation, generally referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), is upon us. To realize these optimistic expectations for meaningful growth, innovation and entrepreneurship generally associated with startups will be even more crucial. However, all of the indicators ranging from IPO's, venture capital investment, and organic industry growth rates strongly suggest that new business models are needed. Taking inspiration from the robust incubation and acquisition activities in software and biotech, a new approach to assist startups pursuing solutions in silicon is being pursued. Its unique focus is on the difficult problems entrepreneurs and new companies encounter when attempting to innovate in semiconductors --namely the challenge of raising sufficient funding and obtaining the appropriate design, prototyping, and test capabilities to move from concept to working prototypes. In this context, a new early-stage startup incubator called Silicon Catalyst is being launched. The objective is to stimulate a vital and robust startup community by connecting the interests of the industry stakeholders, ranging from systems and product-based companies to the enabling supply chain to a network of mentors experienced in assisting startups, and to investors who are looking for attractive returns and timely graduation and acquisition. This presentation will describe the key financial and innovation trends of the semiconductor industry, whose advances underpin a broad set of industries that depend on ever more useful and cost-effective electronics. For context, comparisons with the structure and evolution of related industries will be made. Building upon this framework, the business model and novel approach using lean innovation principles that is being taken by Silicon Catalyst will be described in context of the global trends emerging from extending Moore's law over the next decade and driving innovations for the next growth IoT growth wave.

Speaker: Dan Ambrust, Silicon Catalyst