Cambridge Tech Podcast

Founding CEO Tom Collings talks to us about Kalium Health and managing kidney disease.Did you know that 800 million people are affected by kidney disease around the world, costing $2 billion to manage kidney disease in US alone?Tom talks to us about:·       His background as an engineer, to helping startups, to building a company·       Founding the company with three amazing women – Fiona Karet, Tanya Hutter, Liz Norgett,·       His tips to ‘just do it, life is too short to watch for the side lines’ and bringing others along on the journey·       Following Andy Richards well-known narrative that “Cambridge is a low-risk place to do high risk things” ·       Manufacturing in Cambridge at prototype scale to get the product into the hands of clinics and clinical services, launching initially in the US·       Initial funding from Cambridge investors – Cambridge Angels, Martlet Capital – any timely opportunities for new professional investors during 2024·       We talk about medical insight and scientific innovation from an original idea to clinical trials.Tune in to hear all of this, and much more.Produced by Cambridge TV

Today we bring to you the ‘Would I Sci to You?’ event - the relevant but irreverent science panel show from Cambridge Science Centre!QI’s Head Researcher, James Harkin; scientist entrepreneur and CEO of Start Codon, Jason Mellad; Youtube sensation, Holly Gabrielle; Sliced Bread host and science journalist, Greg Foot; Director of Science and Entrepreneurship at the Babraham Research Campus, Kathryn Chapman; and renowned physicist, Isaac Newton face off against an array of science, research and other items that host Andrew Farrer directs at them.After an intro from #CamTechPod hosts Faye and James, we go straight into the event. There’s upset about the buzzers then we’re straight into primary school science – did you guess the answers?‘Would I Iie to you?’ puts Kathryn and Holly under pressure; the Missing Words round included suggestions from Biden to babies, and so much more. So, sit back and enjoy a selection of clips from the event and see Cambridge #SciTech in a very different way!Produced by Cambridge TV

In this episode we hear from Paul Beastall, CEO of HutanBio who are on a journey that has taken decades of research, formation of the company in 2019, and a trajectory to commercialise a new kind of biofuel company that is truly inspirational.We talk about the entrepreneurial relationship growing out of Cambridge University academics that took the team from the UK to Saudi Arabia, with a firm foothold now in Malaysia and the UK.Paul talks about the different stages of research and company development, including the creation of a floating lab to identify the right organisms to create their unique HBx algal biofuel. This biofuel is set to transform heavy transport and provide a green alternative to the over a billion tons of oil used each year.HutanBio recently raised their first Seed investment of £2.25m and are now set to grow, but notably in a super ethical way. They intend to desert land that is currently unutilised around the globe, and that can also provide employment for local communities. This is a great story of being intellectually based in Cambridge but spreading economic value elsewhere.Not only was it a high-impact chat, but you’ll learn a huge amount about heavy transportation and the impact a transformative biofuel could have on the global environment.Produced by Cambridge TV

What is good technology? Is 'good' technology even possible? And how can feminism help us work towards it? The Good Robot - Why Technology Needs Feminism addresses these crucial questions through the voices of leading feminist thinkers, activists and technologists, and co-editor Kerry McInerney tell us more about the book, its contributors, and carving her own way in the world of AI Ethics. With such a huge amount of thought-provoking content in the book, we highlight four of the essays written by: ·       Blaise Aguera yArcas, Google Research, Cerebra - Good technology is cooperative·       Margaret Mitchell, Hugging Face - Good technology is inclusive·       Ranjit Singh, Data & Society - Good Technology is Slow (to Scale)·       Kanta Dihal, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence - Good technology needs good stories. We talk about ideas and compromises of good tech and the tensions between if it is even possible to have good tech in the environments we live in, and the need to have technology ‘community-driven’.Produced by Cambridge TV

Boutros Bear is a company founded after an aggressive course of breast cancer where Founder and CEO, Sheila Kissane, saw first-hand a gap in her own treatment and care.Boutros Bear delivers comprehensive rehabilitation programs, empowering individuals facing cancer, chronic pain, and mental health challenges.This is a very personal and insightful conversation with someone who has taken an issue that affects many, understood it, and created something to improve health and wellness.·       From civil engineering to a healthcare entrepreneur·       An initial 12-week programme to an integrated #employeewellness platform·       From blind naivety to raising initial capital and the move to Series A·       Scoping what ‘tech’ meant in such a people centric programme (and how tech for healthcare / passive apps don’t necessarily have the benefit for the user)·       18-months of persistence to sign up the perfect partner·       How to engage with corporates on #CorporateWellness #WorkplaceHealth·       Scoping out the US market and being ‘in-pursuit- of sales·       A pursuit of asking questions and flowing honesty!Produced by Cambridge TV

A highlight of the annual calendar is the announcement of the #21toWatch Top21 – the seven people, companies and ‘things’ that are leading the way in innovation across the East of England, including from the centre for Science and Innovation, Cambridge. Running since 2019, now in its 6th year, the programme has seen 1,736 applications and 126 winners. It is recognised as the most independent listing of the who’s who of startups in the region covering every conceivable type of science and technology. Some of the programmes alumni includes Unitary, VividQ, Paragraf, Riverlane, Broken Strong BioSciences, Xampla, Sano Genetics, SATAVIA, Colorifix, Flusso, Porotech, Cambridge Gan Devices, and in this episode we will find out who the 2024 winners are. This episode features alumni and the staggering £415m (not including undisclosed amounts, private acquisitions, and the behemoth of CMR Surgical) raised between 2019-2023; interviews with Dr Alicia Showering CEO of BugBiome (People); Mohammad Saghafifar, Co-founder and CEO, Remedium Energy (Company) and Dmitry Khazhdan, CTO, Tenyks (‘Thing’); and much more.Produced by Cambridge TV

As official podcast partner to Cambridge Tech Week 2024, we’re delighted to run our first full episode dedicated to the event, starting with the recording of the panel at the Cambridge launch, and an interview with Russ Shaw from the London launch event.The Cambridge event really highlighted the desire to bring the outside in – to create a #SXSW for Cambridge and the tech space, where the objective is to bring the outside in. The panellists (Carmen Palacios-Berraquero, CEO, Nu Quantum, David Moore, CEO, Pragmatic, Pam Garside, Chair, Cambridge Angels, and Harriet Fear MBE) had an open discussion about innovation, funding, and challenges of growth, as well as sharing feedback on last year’s event and their wishes for 2024.As one of the events ‘ambassadors’, Russ Shaw, Founder of Tech London Advocates, talked about Cambridge’s global reputation for Science and Innovation – “Cambridge punches enormously above its weight in terms of its size and scale”.And we also caught up with Douglas MacDonald, Partner who heads up the national tech sector at Mills & Reeve who are also one of the event sponsors (others include Rathbones, Cambridge Management Consulting, UK Telecoms Innovation Network UKTIN, HSBC and Cambridge Consultants).And of course, we caught up with the man himself, chair of the organising committee Chris Bruce, to find out which three words are on the top of his mind for 2024. Produced by Cambridge TV.

Providing a snapshot of what it has been like trying to raise and deploy capital over the last year, is Chris Keen, Head of Emerging Companies in Cambridge, at Mishcon de Reya.We discuss the more challenging market of 2023, but with a deal level that remained almost the same as previous years, it’s looking rosy for 2024.From Pre-seed through to Series D, Private Equity (PE) and Mergers and Acquisition (M&A), we talk about the dynamics of deals locally in Cambridge and throughout the UK. And Chris gives some useful guidance on when to engage with a lawyer, and note, the advice is to bring it further forward than you may think.We also find out that many advisors are providing line of sight of investment potential from the Cambridge ecosystem to investors outside of the region – so that’s great news for our homegrown tech and innovation.Produced by Carl Homer, Cambridge TV

This week’s guest shares his career path from military, to a large corporate, to building a startup that supports …start-ups.Owen Thompson, CEO and co-founder talks about Cambridge Future Tech’s ethos and how they support technical founders to grow from the pre-ideation phase, commercialise and support the business set-up.Produced by Carl Homer, Cambridge TV.