Monthly Archives: April 2009

Downturn

Posted on April 30, 2009 by paulmcl

Superficially, the present downturn is similar to the “technology” crash of 2001. I put technology in quotes since very little of that first internet boom involved true technology, and many people who called themselves programmers were writing plain HTML. As … Continue reading →

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Creating demand in EDA

Posted on April 29, 2009 by paulmcl

I talked earlier about how EDA marketing can’t create demand. Small companies cannot afford much marketing and large companies are in the vicious cycle of not being able to get innovation into the channel since they can’t create demand even … Continue reading →

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Presentations without bullets

Posted on April 28, 2009 by paulmcl

I talked earlier about the typical hi-tech presentation where the content is largely on the slides. In that case you must add color by what you say rather than simply reading what is on the slides. The alternative approach is … Continue reading →

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Swiffering new EDA tools

Posted on April 27, 2009 by paulmcl

Why isn’t a new EDA tool like Swiffer? One point that I’ve made before is that big EDA companies suffer from being unable to get new products into their channel. As I said earlier: “When so much is riding on … Continue reading →

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The art of presentations

Posted on April 24, 2009 by paulmcl

As a marketing guy, and even when I was an engineering manager, I make a lot of presentations. I’ve also been on a couple of presentation courses over the years. The most recently by Nancy Duarte, whose biggest claim to … Continue reading →

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Don’t listen to your customers

Posted on April 23, 2009 by paulmcl

There is a train of thought that the route to success in a business is giving a customer what they say they want. At some level this is obviously good advice. But there are two problems with it. Firstly, the … Continue reading →

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Guest blog: Phil Moorby

Posted on April 22, 2009 by paulmcl

Today’s guest blog is by Phil Moorby who back in the 1980s at Gateway Design Automation was the inventor of the Verilog language, for which he was given the prestigious Kauffman award in 2006. Gateway was, of course, acquired by … Continue reading →

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Bletchley park

Posted on April 21, 2009 by paulmcl

I spent a day last week at Bletchley Park, about an hour north of London. As I think is now well known, during the Second World War this was where a team of smart people, notably Alan Turing, broke the … Continue reading →

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EDA startups: channel costs $6M

Posted on April 20, 2009 by paulmcl

I’ve put together several business plans for EDA startups once the product is ready for market. One question is always how much money needs to be raised. The answer always turns out to be about $6M. When you put together … Continue reading →

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Systems: it’s turtles all the way down

Posted on April 17, 2009 by paulmcl

According to Steven Hawking, Bertrand Russell once gave a public lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our … Continue reading →

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