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Tim Haynes, chief executive and founder of Nujira, talks to Steve Rogerson in our series of interviews for CIEonline. Haynes has brought more than 20 years of telecoms experience to Nujira, most recently as UK operations director at Symbionics, where he had management and operations responsibility for engineering staff within the wireless and multimedia division at the company's two UK design centres. During his 11 year tenure at Symbionics, he founded and managed its cellular business group, securing multiple multi-million dollar contracts with major blue-chip clients.
1. Nujira has just filed its 100th patent. That seems a lot for a company less than ten years old. Where does this innovation come from?
Historically, what we are doing goes back to the 1940s in amplifier design and nobody has ever really made it work. So we have gone in less than ten years from a blank sheet of paper to final product at different power levels, which has meant we have come across a lot off patentable work. But the real reason is that there has been little work done in this field for 50 years. But now more companies are getting into that and there has been a rise in envelope tracking related patents in the past couple of years.
2. What prompted the decision to leave Symbionics and set up your own company and would you do it again?
The decision to leave Symbionics was made for me. It was acquired by Cadence in 1998 as part of its expansion plans. It decided to go from IC design services to product design services, and as part of that Symbionics was acquired. Then the telecoms bubble burst in 2000 and we became a casualty. The Cambridge site were I worked survived till 2002 and then was shut. Therefore the decision to leave was made for me. As a result of that, I started up Nujira. That was my solution to being made redundant.
I wanted it to be a product company. I didn’t want it to be a services company, which was what Symbionics was. I felt we would be shipping amplifiers, but I got that wrong and we are shipping power supplies today. I predicted that the technology would be adopted, and it is being, so I got that right.
I wouldn’t ever do a start-up from scratch again. It was a hard experience. I might consider joining a small company at the five to ten person stage.
3. How easy is it to start a new company in the UK in terms of finance and other support?
I am disappointed with this country in the way things are for start-up companies. It is really very difficult. You can start a consultancy relatively easily, but if you want to start a product business it is hard. There is a large funding gap. I see businesses that can be funded by angels and they want a quick flip. They put their money in and take it out again in two years’ time with no real venture capital. The venture capitalists are much more for mid to late stage capital; they want to see something that is close to revenue. But there is this large gap in the middle. I don’t see the funding gap being addressed by many in the UK. The government needs to take a serious look at how it helps small businesses.
4. You have a child 12 weeks old. Which keeps you awake most at night – the child or thinking about the business?
About three to four weeks ago, definitely the child. But then I don’t sleep a lot, but I do sleep well. I need about five hours’ sleep and I can fit that in between feeds.
As a CEO, I have to remain relaxed and calm. You need to do that because you are under so much pressure at certain times in the year. You have to keep your head. There is no off switch, so you are always on call. I am on holiday today, for example, and still I have calls to do. But if you can remain relaxed, it is bearable.
5. How important to the company was the recent agreement with Xilinx to integrate your envelope tracking technology on one of its FPGAs?
It was important. We have projects with Texas Instruments as well, which were just as important. It was important to show that our technology could be supported by other platforms. They have their own algorithms running on the FPGAs or with TI on the ASSPs.
We have created an organisation called the Open ET Alliance to standardise the interface between an envelope tracking modulator and the baseband. We felt this was important for the industry. We are working with baseband vendors who are working with the specification. We expect by Q1 next year there will be at least four baseband vendors with Open ET interfaces. The standard has versions for handsets and infrastructure. Xilinx is an important demonstration of the ability to work with envelope tracking modulators.
