Gaule: What is your role at UKTI and your previous experience in venture capital (VC)?
Wade: I am director of the VC unit at UK Trade & Investment, an organisation that promotes UK companies around the world and encourages investment into the UK on behalf of the government. My background is as an entrepreneur. I worked for 20 years in major corporates in the telecoms vendor industry in the US, principally with a company called Northern Telecom. Then I formed my own company, Cambridge Positioning Systems, a technology company that was creating the fundamentals of location. The solution we created became mandatory for all US handsets and therefore was of great interest to the industry, attracting corporate investors (Ericsson, Siemens, Infineon, Intel). We sold the company in 2007 to Cambridge Silicon Radio and since then I have created four new companies, mostly in the mobile technology space, all of which we have subsequently sold. A year ago I sold my last company in the mobile loyalty space and then had the opportunity to focus on selling a country rather than a company.
To read the rest of the article, go to our October issue PDF.