Billy Boyle Blog

  • Key Features of US SBIR

    Here are the key features highlighted in David Connells report “Secrets” of the World’s Largest Seed Capital Fund Regular solicitations at fixed dates during the year; Awards directed at the best submissions from across the US; no state or regional quotas; Complete transparency in terms of topics, awards winners and amounts; Standard contracts; companies own Continue reading

  • Portfolio Monte Carlo Analysis

    Introduction A disruptive technology will often drive a paradigm shift in applications and deployment scenarios. Valuing the opportunity is a difficult task using analysis of existing markets because the output is predicated on the basis of the existing technology landscape. We seek to answer two questions. How do we attempt to value opportunities with a Continue reading

  • MacRobert Award

    On the night the Owlstone FAIMS technology was runner up in the MacRobert award. We did share a few laughs with the Queen’s husband, Prince Philip, and ex-Chief Executive of BP, Lord Brown.   Click here to see more photos of the night. Continue reading

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  • Cambridge Technopole Map

    I was in a meeting last week with Tim Minshall and he gave me a copy of the Cambridge technopole report, an extremely useful and concise summary of the main activities and organisations in the cluster. I’ve extracted some of the main organisations and have done a technopole Google map mash up, which you can Continue reading

  • Portfolio Selection II – Schema

    The discrete portfolio investment vs return plot can be used to build executive intuition for project interdependencies and the optimum mix of projects. An interactive dashboard is a good way to ‘get to know’ the model – this can be done directly in Excel using ‘Form’ controls or using custom dashboard software e.g. Crystal Xcelcius Continue reading

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  • Portfolio Selection I – Visual Representation

    A start-up, multinational, investment house or VC faces similar decisions in portfolio allocation. How should I put a finite pool of capital to work in a way that provides the best return with the minimum risk? There are a number of black box optimisation techniques that spit the optimum portfolio out given a set of Continue reading

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  • SBIR Monte Carlo Analysis

    Introduction SBIR grants are a key source of early stage financing for many small companies – awards are frequent, transparent, 100% funded (allowing significant non-dilutive growth), and may result in product revenue as the agencies act as informed customers. Here is a useful link explaining SBIRs and a report by David Connell, which argues that Continue reading

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About Me

An entrepreneurial engineer driven by patient impact. C0-founder and CEO of Owlstone Medical with a company mission to save 100k lives. I also try to support engineers and scientists and their start-up ideas.

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