Early Bird Tickets
Fifty years ago, the path from idea to global company was straightforward: build something, sell it, scale it. Today, subscriber numbers and social reach can attract millions in funding before a single product ships. But has anything really changed?
From the founding of the Bank of England to the South Sea Bubble and the Industrial Revolution, investment has always swung between backing what exists and betting on what might. This event examines that recurring tension - between the inventor who builds and the influencer who promises - and what it means for entrepreneurs, investors, and innovators navigating the funding landscape today.
Through expert talks and a concluding panel discussion, we'll draw on historical patterns, lived experience, and venture capital insight to explore where are in this ongoing transition, and what the current moment means for those seeking or providing funding.
Attend to:
- Understand the historical cycles between production-led and promise-led investment
- Hear from inventors, influencers, and investors on what it really takes to secure funding today
- Explore how design thinking and user-centred innovation are reshaping commercial value
- Discover where technology start-ups sit in the evolving funding landscape for deep tech and AI
Who should attend: Entrepreneurs, inventors, investors, and business leaders at any stage of the funding journey. Particularly relevant for those developing new technologies, seeking investment, or advising early-stage companies in technology sector.
This event is kindly hosted by The Glasshouse, @InnovateCambridge.
Niven Curtis-Woodcock
Harleen Grover
Nick Hunn
Phil O’Donovan FREng
Tom Shirley
Craig Townsend
Connected Thinking SIG Champions
Paul Bearpark
Paul is an experienced engineer, engineering manager and product manager. He has spent over 30 years working in the field of electronics in both product development companies and technology consultancies. During his career he has led the development of products through their entire life-cycle from concept to volume manufacture and on-going support and upgrade. He specialises in radio communications, sensor systems and systems engineering. He has worked in the defence and security, telecommunications, and test and measurement industries. Paul studied Physics with Electronics at the University of Manchester and has an MBA from Warwick Business School.
Paul Green
Paul is a creative innovator who Co-Founded Iotics and previously Arkessa. He delights in exploring ideas, thinking different things and enjoys the interplay between academic and technology silos. The principles underpinning Iotics derive from overlaying Kingdom Theology and the Ancient Near East with the Internet to create ground-breaking secure interoperability critical to enable multi-party AI applications. Now semi-retired, Paul is a Christian Lay Minister and a tour guide at Ironbridge Gorge Museums. He continues to be excited by technology and continues to make patent applications but most of all loves hill walking with his dog.
Nick Hunn
For the past thirty years Nick has been closely involved with short range wireless and communications, designing technology that helps to bring mobility to products, particularly in the areas of telematics, M2M, IoT, wearables, smart energy and mobile health. He is closely involved with the Bluetooth SIG, the Continua Alliance and other medical and wireless standards bodies. He is the author of 'The Essentials of Short Range Wireless' - a book attempting to explain the application of wireless technology to product developers.
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickhunn/
Sylvia Lu, FRSA
Sylvia Lu is an award-winning Chartered Engineer and Non-Executive Director. Sylvia has over 16 years of experience in the Telecom industry for four mobile generations with semiconductor vendors. Sylvia provides guidance on the impact of emerging technologies on products and corporate strategy, influences global standards, accelerates the adoption of new technologies, and provides independent advice to industry and policy stakeholders.
Sylvia serves on several national and global industry Boards: she is an elected board director of CW (Cambridge Wireless), and serves on the Advisory Board of UKTIN, which provides independent advice on the telecoms sector, champions the opportunities in telecoms research, development, and innovation for the UK, and helps UKTIN provide impartial input to government. She also served on the Board of 5G-ACIA (5G Alliance for Connected Industries and Automation), joined forces with global industry stakeholders to influence 5G development and deployment in line with industrial imperatives to accelerate Industry 4.0.
She holds a first-class Electronic Engineering degree, a Master of Science degree in Communications and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol. She graduated with a Distinction from the University of Oxford in PGDip Strategy & Innovation, and an Executive MBA degree from the University of Cambridge. Sylvia is also an artist.
- X:
- SylviaLuUk
- LinkedIn:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/sylvialu
Shahzad Nadeem
Shahzad is the Director Business Growth at Itron Metering Solutions. Previously he worked at Plextek as the Head of Smart Cities Business and later as Head of Industrial Sensing Business. . His focus is delivering business value utilising technology innovations. Development of a major IoT connectivity platform is one of Shahzad’s recent works. He specialises in EVs, DEMs (Distributed Energy Management Systems), Smart Cities, mobile networks, MNOs, MVNOS, MVNEs, Wholesale, m2m and IoT and has keen interest in both technical and commercial aspects. Working cross functionally with businesses, customers, technology, marketing and suppliers – he has delivered complex solutions in the mobile networks and IoT industry. Shahzad has spent 15 years in different technology roles and a decade in business development roles.
Tim Whittaker
Cambridge Consultants was started in 1960 to pioneer the delivery of independent design and development services in electronic, mechanical and product engineering: we are one of the founder companies of the high-technology Cambridge Phenomenon. Our history of world-class services is augmented by our development of intellectual property in areas including telecommunications, software, silicon, medical devices, machine learning, and by more than 20 successful spin-out ventures. Today Cambridge Consultants employs over 900 world-class engineers, scientists, project managers and technicians with offices in Cambridge UK, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Singapore and Tokyo; we provide the full range of services for excellent product design to a worldwide client base in the wireless, consumer, industrial, energy and medical markets. Tim Whittaker is a System Architect in the Wireless business unit, where he has taken the technical lead in projects using radio standards like Bluetooth, ZigBee, DECT, and in the creation of specialist communications schemes for new applications, or to use new spectrum allocations.
