BATH, England, Oct. 10, 2008 — Twenty of Britain's most innovative technology companies will pitch for funds and exhibit their ideas at the fifth annual SETsquared Partnership Showcase 2008. The event, which will be held at One Great George Street, London, from 8am on Thursday, October 16th, brings together the cream of technology innovators in electronics, information technology, engineering and biotechnology.
Six companies will give 10-minute presentations to an audience of around 120 venture capitalists, angel investors and high-net-worth individuals, and an additional fourteen will participate in a half-day exhibition. The event is run by the SETsquared Partnership, which brings together the resources of the Universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey to support early-stage technology businesses. Companies that have participated in the past four years have raised 75 million GBP in investment. Capsant, Gnodal, HeliSwirl, Null Hypothesis, SoftwareMining and Xintronix – the companies making presentations at this year's event – are seeking some 15 million GBP to fund their product development and business expansion.
Capsant is developing a technology for creating human "micro organs" for drug testing derived from stem cells. Gnodal is promising an order of magnitude improvement in high-speed network performance for data centres. HeliSwirl's "Slugbuster" offers to change the economics and environmental footprint of offshore oil and gas production. The online "Journal of Unlikely Science" is the fast-growing brainchild of Null Hypothesis. SoftwareMining aims to defuse the time bomb created by 200 billion lines of obsolete COBOL computer code, much of it in Fortune 500 companies, and Xintronix is developing semiconductor chip technology that will make computer USB ports run more than 10X faster than they do today.
Professor Philip Nelson, Deputy Vice Chancellor of the University of Southampton, will host the SETsquared Partnership Showcase 2008 and the guest speaker is Steve Purdham, founder and ex-CEO of SurfControl and CEO and Founder Investor of We7 Ltd.
Simon Bond, Centre Director for SETsquared at the University of Bath, commented: "For any potential investor in the UK's innovation economy this is the event of the year. Nowhere else will they find such a breadth of technology breakthroughs presented in a brief, clear and concise way by the individuals that will drive these success stories of the future. The twenty businesses represented are R&D intensive, scalable businesses based on British technical intellectual property that addresses global market opportunities."
About the SETsquared Business Acceleration Centres
The SETsquared Business Acceleration Centres support early-stage, technology, high-growth potential ventures both from within and outside the universities of Bath, Bristol, Southampton and Surrey to accelerate their businesses. Each Centre provides business mentoring to entrepreneurs and business professionals, and office space. Participants have access to 450-seasoned technology entrepreneurs, investors and support professionals.
Over the last 3 years, companies supported by the centres have raised over 120m GBP and created over 1000 jobs. Over 100 businesses have "graduated" from the centres, typically after 18 months to 3 years, and with expended services now over 100 are currently being supported within the Partnership.
http://www.setsquared.co.uk
http://www.setsquaredpartnership.co.uk
Further information:
Simon Bond, Centre Director, SETsquared Partnership, University of Bath:
Email: Email
Telephone: +44 (0)1225 388682
Karen Brooks, Programme Director, SETsquared Partnership:
Email: Email
Telephone: +44 (0)7810 805406
PR agency contact:
Bob Jones, TechnoPR:
Email: Email
Telephone: +44 (0)7595 218754
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