Silicon Valley's movers and shakers return to Cambridge

These are some of the questions which will be discussed at the ‘Silicon Valley Comes to Cambridge’ event 19-21 November 2009, which has been organised by NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and which will be hosted at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

Prominent serial entrepreneurs, angels and venture capitalists from Silicon Valley and their UK counterparts will be taking centre stage at the 2009 forum. They will share their views on business venture collaborations and reveal the new and innovative business models they see as the most disruptive across the green and consumer internet sectors.

The Silicon Valley speakers will include Brett Bullington, an angel investor who backed companies such as Digg and Flickr; Bob Cart, Founder and CEO of Green Volts; Caterina Fake, Co-Founder of Flickr; Reid Hoffman, Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of LinkedIn; Salar Kamangar, VP Product Management, Google; Mark Mitchell, Co-founder and COO of Serious Materials; Allen Morgan, Managing Director of Mayfield Fund, Jigar Shah, CEO, Carbon War Room and Biz Stone, Co-Founder of Twitter.

Co-founder of the event, serial entrepreneur, investor and Cambridge University Finance Committee Member, Sherry Coutu commented: “The ‘Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge’ series of events is intended to inspire students and alumni to consider starting or joining an entrepreneurial business. It also aims to foster relationships between the leading entrepreneurs, angels and investors from world leading centres of innovation and with their help encourage policymakers to look at how to expand the UK’s innovation capacity and promote economic growth.”

The three-day programme begins with a not-to-be-missed debate at the Cambridge Student Union Society on Thursday 19 November, addressing the issue: ‘This House believes that the banking bailout was a waste of money: how investing in innovative green and consumer internet business will do more for the economy.’

Friday 20 November provides a full day of Masterclasses where Silicon Valley iconic entrepreneurs and investors will share their experience in an inspiring series of seminars. They will cover green innovation and entrepreneurship, examine the differences between UK and US exit strategies, the importance of social networks and the changing landscape.

The third and concluding day on 21 November is a half day of workshops dedicated to CEOs from clean tech, enviro-tech and web start-ups. They will have the opportunity to demonstrate the quality of UK entrepreneurship to some of Silicon Valley’s leading figures, and stimulate engagement and connections between entrepreneurs and organisations from Silicon Valley and Silicon Fen. The deadline to apply to attend this CEO workshop is Friday 6 November.

Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Director of Judge Business School, the host of the event, commented: “We sit at the heart of a great university which is situated in one of the world’ leading clusters of high technology entrepreneurship; the Cambridge Technopole. This event underlines our commitment to supporting entrepreneurial activities and knowledge exchange. ‘Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge’ will facilitate interconnections between two vibrant and innovative ecosystems, helping the next generation of entrepreneurs address the opportunities and challenges of tomorrow.”
 

Sponsors of the event include NESTA, BDO, BT, TSB, UKTI Global Entrepreneurship Programme and Morrison & Foerster. In addition, contributions from Google, Linkedin, Huddle.net, CUE, CUTEC, The BLN, MBA Ventures, EEI, CfEL and Judge Business School helped to make this event happen.

For more information on the event and to see the agenda in full please visit the link above right.