I recently wrote about Warren Savage, CEO of IPextreme, and his work as the chairman of the Global Semiconductor Alliance's IP Interest Group. Warren is also spearheading the "Capital Lite Working Group."  This group's objective is to redesign the fabless funding profile, by reducing upfront costs to create a more attractive risk:reward ratio.  As a means to do this, they've created the Cap-Lite Resource Portal, a website which allows fabless start-ups to IP, tools and services from providers that utilize Capital Lite principles.  

For more information about Cap-Lite, please visit: http://www.gsaglobal.org/capital_lite_working_group/docs/20120326_resource_portal.pdf.  This seems like a no-brainer to me - looking forward to seeing the results. 

 I had lunch and a very interesting conversation last week with Warren Savage, CEO of IPextreme, and chairman of the Global Semiconductor Association’s IP Interest Group.   Warren’s company, IPextreme, commercializes and licenses intellectual property (IP).  They’re looking at how they can support the fabless community with IP building blocks, and what are the pricing models that are required for early stage companies to help with operational efficiency.   

The GSA’s stated mission for the IP Interest Group is: “To address IP industry challenges preventing consumers from success with IP. The IP includes: silicon, embedded software, verification and system level IP.”   During lunch we talked about some of the questions that the group is focusing on.  One of these is how to increase the number of semiconductor start-ups and improve the return on investment.  Another is, what is the ideal investor profile?  Another is, how do we lower the costs for start-ups?  And, finally, how can we best providing resources and efficiencies for fabless start-ups, putting everything together to create these companies faster, better and stronger? 

For more information about the IP Interest Group, go to http://www.gsaglobal.org/ip/index.aspx.