CamSemi CEO, David Baillie

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CamSemi CEO, David Baillie

Last Updated on Thursday, 18 February 2010 12:35 Written by Ben Fountain Monday, 22 October 2007 19:26

Resources - Q10: Talking Heads

Fresh from his success in helping to raise $26m for Green semiconductor outfit, CamSemi, David Baillie fields this week's ten questions.

Backgrounder: Cambridge-based CamSemi has recently introduced a new family of semiconductor chips to help manufacturers develop low cost, more energy-efficient power supplies for the ‘booming’ consumer electronics industry.

The company is committed to enabling cost-efficient power conversion and has recently secured $26 million in VC funding on the back of its unique first products and development pipeline.

01.What are the factors, in your view, that helped CamSemi raise one of the largest VC funding rounds for a European fabless semiconductor company in 2007?

It is a combination of the scale of our target markets, our technical and commercial progress to date, our proprietary technologies, our management and engineering teams and our existing and future product portfolios.

Our ICs address a huge global market undergoing deep change. The consumer electronics industry is facing mounting consumer, regulatory and environmental pressures to introduce more energy-efficient power supplies and battery chargers. CamSemi’s approach is unique: we can enable more efficient power conversion but at low cost and with simpler circuits. Other solutions are available but they come at a cost premium.

02.Are you able to give us a sneak peek at your product roadmap going forward?

We work in fiercely competitive markets so cannot disclose too much at this stage. Our first products – the C2470 family – are stand-alone controllers offering market-leading power conversion efficiencies and low no-load consumption. One of our next developments is to integrate our sophisticated control technology with CamSemi’s patented approach for high voltage power ICs to deliver even greater cost and performance benefits.

03.Is there a killer application for your technology?

An average 9 W linear power supply weighs a massive 450 g, wastes 50% of the energy drawn from the mains as heat and has a standby power consumption of 1 W. CamSemi’s mini adapter equivalent, based around our C2470 chip, is just 45 g, wastes less than 20% energy and has ten times lower no-load consumption at 100 mW. Our solution is perfect for the linear replacement market: it not only beats the newly emerging worldwide standard for efficiency and no-load power but it costs less than a linear to manufacture too!

04.Your management team has been highlighted as one of your principal strengths. Is there any further expertise you need to bring on board?

CamSemi is growing very rapidly and experiencing a surge in demand for our first products. As a result we plan to create up to 20 new positions across our Cambridge and Taiwan offices in the next six to 12 months and are particularly looking to expand our SMPS design and applications engineering teams to help major customers optimise their designs for manufacture.

05.What would you highlight as your main achievements since taking up your post at CamSemi in 2004?

As a management group, we have been very successful in assembling world-class power engineering, operations, quality management and sales and marketing teams. Although we have grown considerably and have global ambitions we have also managed to maintain the motivation, enthusiasm, rapid decision making and easy communication channels that have been fundamental in driving our progress to date.

06.Green issues have become firmly established on the mainstream agenda over recent months. How has this impacted on your strategy?

CamSemi was founded to help manufacturers achieve more energy-efficient power conversion so environmental concerns have been embedded in the company from day one. What we did not expect is that the market demand for low cost, simpler solutions to enable energy-efficient power supplies would be so strong. As a result we were encouraged by customers to bring our stand-alone controller technology to market in advance of our other more integrated solutions.

07.What are your plans with regard to establishing a global presence?

We have recently opened an office in Taiwan, where many of the world’s power supply manufacturers are based and in the last few months have strengthened our distributor network considerably with appointments for Greater China, Japan and Korea. So we are making good progress. Currently we are finalising our plans for the US and expect to announce some developments within the next few weeks.

08.Can you give a flavour of what we can expect from CamSemi over the coming year?

We are looking to build on our existing volume supply contracts by getting closer to customers and their new product plans and ramping up sales and revenue. We also have a number of innovative products in development targeting our core markets of power supplies and lighting and will be making further announcements in 2008.

09.Can CamSemi be as successful as CSR?

Yes, but our approach differs from theirs in that we are looking at replacing current solutions that are too costly, complex or energy-inefficient rather than creating new markets from scratch. We already have some compelling products, strong customer relationships and a portfolio of technologies and products in development. Add in our enthusiasm and drive and we have all the right components to become a future leader in the multi-billion dollar power management market.

10.Can you give a sketch of where you expect CamSemi to be in five years from now?

Global market leadership might sound glib but it has some foundation. We may be operating in what seems like a niche but we are targeting a massive market with compelling products. Every consumer electronic product connected to the mains today needs an internal or stand-alone power supply and with around seven billion supplies produced annually there is a huge opportunity for us.

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