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Resources Q10: Talking Heads Co-founder of CSR, Dr Phil O'Donovan talks about his latest venture, Camrivox
Resources Q10: Talking Heads Co-founder of CSR, Dr Phil O'Donovan talks about his latest venture, Camrivox | Co-founder of CSR, Dr Phil O'Donovan talks about his latest venture, Camrivox |
| Written by Ben Fountain | |
| Wednesday, 27 February 2008 | |
 "
Skype is very much a person to person medium where a person can call
another person cheaply, but it is not an answer to the business needs
for automated offices today or tomorrow."
BACKGROUNDERDr Phil O’Donovan is a co-founder of CSR plc which listed on the London Stock Exchange in March 2004, became a FTSE 250 company in July of the same year, and is now Europe’s largest fabless semiconductor company. He has worked in the communications industry for nearly 30 years in both small and large companies and now works with the founders, boards and management of venture-backed companies and with those seeking to make investments in emerging companies. Dr O’Donovan is seeking to recreate the CSR effect in his role as chairman of Camrivox, the unified communications (UC) innovator. UC integrates mobile and fixed line phone calls, telephony functions, voice mail and conferencing with the work you do on your computer. These include documents and document sharing, spreadsheets, instant messaging, e mail, calendars and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. Camrivox is initially focused on computer-telephony integration (CTI) - the ability to integrate computers with telephony - for the CRM user. In the future, it says it will develop additional framework components to support the distribution of information between applications, for example. 1) What have you been doing since leaving CSR? Understanding lessons learnt from the CSR experience, coaching emerging companies and building a portfolio of investments in early stage tech companies. 2) What motivates the co-founder of such a successful company to seek ‘new’ challenges? The need to see what it might take to repeat the CSR success and, I guess, the fact that some people are never satisfied! 3) How does your latest venture, Camrivox, rank against CSR in terms of potential? Like all early stage companies there is an element of risk. However, Camrivox operates in a growing market space, with strong technology and a management team who, I feel, can meet the expectation of significant growth. 4) The company is operating in a particularly competitive marketplace. What are its USPs? Camrivox is a software company that enables the telephone and the computer on the desk to communicate. Where Camrivox scores is in the small to medium sized business market where the software can enable ‘Unified Communications’ applications to work without investing in a large server platform. The USP at Camrivox is that the software is downloaded to the PC and bypasses the need (and expense) for an enterprise level system thus changing the competitive nature of the market. In this way, the Camrivox software is disruptive and is seen as a full feature option for the SME without the investment in new infrastructure or updating an old network. 5) How have your experiences as an investee while at CSR shaped your approach as an investor? I hope that the experience gained whilst being invested in is enabling me to be a sound but founder-friendly investor ! 6) When people think of VOIP they usually think of Skype and CTI is usually associated with large call centres. What markets is Camrivox addressing? The word VOIP is becoming less used. The market buzz these days is Unified Communications, which has some elements of VOIP but is a small part of the bigger picture. UC is being driven by the convergence of “what you do on the phone, merged with what you do on your computer on the desk.” Camrivox provides applications that enable greater office productivity to be achieved. Skype is very much a person to person medium where a person can call another person cheaply, but it is not an answer to the business needs for automated offices today or tomorrow. 7) Is Camrivox another IPO play? It is too early to say but I know that the founders and management of Camrivox wish to become the UC market leader in the shortest possible time. 8) Do you have any projects underway besides Camrivox? Can you give any details? Camrivox is one of my more mature investments but others should become visible not long from now. 9) Can you map out Camrivox’s expansion plans over the next two years or so? Today Camrivox software enables the desk phones of partners like SNOM Technologies AG, a German telephone company, to integrate with Customer Relationship Management tools like SalesForce.com. In the near term this will be expanded to cover new device partners and very importantly, mobile phones. In the middle term, the CRM partner channel will be expanded to include the likes of Microsoft Dynamics, Netsuite and SAGE. In the longer term, Camrivox will develop new applications and services in the UC market sector and, because they are focused on adding a new product every six months, I feel the growth will be significant. 10) If you could give three tips to a budding entrepreneur seeking to build ‘the next CSR’, what would they be? My three tips would be: Firstly, form a complementary core team of two to four founders; secondly, be clear about the business model and target a growing, global product market and thirdly, after raising as much cash as you can, be very focused for the next three years. There are, of course, three or four more tips closely following these first three!
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