Femotcell company picoChip has just announced that it has shipped its 1,000,000 chip and also that it has closed an oversubscribed round of $20 million. picoChip’s existing investors are Atlas Venture, Highland Capital, Intel Capital, Pond Ventures, Rothschild, Samsung, and Scottish Equity Partners all participated.

It is good to see that investors are investing in their existing portfolio companies although picoChip has been gaining traction in the femtocell market for some time. Femtocells is the awkward name given to micro mobile base stations – the kind of thing that you might stick into an office or residential building in order to boost mobile signal.

• RT @BDO_Cambridge *really* believe in the product? Know any conferences that offer a money back guarantee? http://bit.ly/bDA1lC #
• Nano-celebrity at last. Recognised by teller in my bank who was reading Cambridge Evening News. http://bit.ly/d80Vl4 #
• +!Great guy. RT @tomforemski: Strong recommendation for services of friend David Tebbutt (@tebbo) http://bit.ly/aHWIq5 #
• RT @mikebutcher Announcing #TechHub for startups: location, launch date & party http://3.ly/6Uma #
• http://bit.ly/FutureGames #
• What do you think or want to know about the Future of Games? Best comment wins prize. http://bit.ly/FutureGames #
• One word. MOBILE. http://bit.ly/aWHXqI #
• Internet trends from Mary Meeker's Morgan Stanley. http://bit.ly/aWHXqI One word – MOBILE. #
• Mr McGuire, 1967, 'Plastics'. Mary Meeker, 2010, 'Mobile'. http://bit.ly/PlasticsMobile #
• Don't know what it is but I know I want one. http://tweetphoto.com/26478897 http://tweetphoto.com/26478934 #
• It is a bio fuelled Antarctic ice buggy. http://tweetphoto.com/26479084 #

Mary Meeker, legendary Internet analyst at Morgan Stanley Research, and her team, produce some of the best macro views of the evolving world of technology. This presentation is no exception. There are 53 slides.

Below this is the short version. Just substitute the word, ‘plastics’, with, ‘mobile’.

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Join us on 15th July for the BLN Growth Forum in partnership with BDO & Silicon Valley Bank.

Our speakers have created over $10 billion of company value from zero. Check them out here.

Sir Terry Leahy will step down as CEO of Tesco in just under a year’s time. His successor was announced today as Philip Clarke, Head of Tesco’s IT. Philip is not really your average Sys Admin though having taken home £ 2.2 million in wages (including bonus) in 2006.

This is notable and welcome for a number of reasons. It is relatively rare to make the switch from CTO to CEO of an organisation, particularly one as large as Tesco (over £50 billion revenue). Tesco is also probably not viewed as being a technology company by most but this betrays a lack of understanding of the reality of modern retailing. What sets Tesco and other market disruptors like Ocado apart from others in the sector is their reliance on flawless execution of technology projects to generate better data about customers.

The more board rooms that understand the core strategic value of technology to the processes in a business, the better for the future for the economy.

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How can you make a successful transition from CFO, CTO to CEO?

Join us on 15th July for the BLN Growth Forum in partnership with BDO, Ideaspace & Silicon Valley Bank. Our speakers, many ex CFOs andCTOs themselves, have created over $10 billion of company value from zero. Check them out here.

We have offered our guests a money back guarantee since we started in 2007. We have offered the same guarantee for our BLN Growth Forum event.  We are about building networks and nurturing relationships and some people don’t feel comfortable committing cash and time against an unknown quantity – despite the testimonials of previous participants. Fair enough. We also calculated that the value we would get back from someone that asks for a refund is huge. If someone cares enough to ask for their money back, they will have something useful to say to us and we want to hear about it.

We tried to nick the wording take inspiration for the words for a money back guarantee from other event sites but then discovered that we couldn’t find any conferences or fora that offered such a thing.

Here then is ours. It is all our own work. If you know of events that do, would be fascinated to take a look.

No Quibble Money Back Guarantee

We hope you will get value from your day but we also recognise that you are busy and probably thinking why should I give up a day at work and go to another conference?

We think you will find the people you meet at our Forum have more in common with you, and have more to offer you by way of shared experience, advice, investment and potential partnerships, than most events you go to. (Or you don’t bother going to anymore because you have got bored with wasting your time at events where some terribly important people get up on stage in a large, darkened room and don’t really tell you anything).

We want the BLN Growth Forum to be different – and we are prepared to put your money where our mouth is.

If you register on time for the day, you can at any point over the course of the proceedings, tell a member of our team you are leaving as you don’t feel you got value and would like your registration fee returned. We would love to know why, but we will happily return it with no questions asked. We look on this guarantee as our investment in customer feedback.

Frankly, we find it strange that other events don’t offer the same promise.

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Join us on 15th July for the BLN Growth Forum in partnership with BDO & Silicon Valley Bank.

Our speakers have created over $10 billion of company value from zero. Check them out here.

Earlybird discounts available until 7th June.

AVEVA Group plc, the Cambridge based engineering software pioneer, has turned the tables on the Vikings by using its war chest for a double raid in Scandinavia.

The company’s continuing march to global domination saw the share price soar 19p in early trading to 1198p.

AVEVA is paying around £12.8 million cash from existing resources to buy Danish company, Logimatic Software A/S and some £4.4m for certain trade and assets from ADB Systemer AS, a Norwegian company.

If you had the chance to put a question about your business to a panel of entrepreneurs who have collectively created over $10 billion of company value from zero, what would it be?

If you have a killer question about your business, we want to hear from you. We want to offer the opportunity for innovators and entrepreneurs to submit their burning question to the panel on the day of the BLN Growth Forum, July 15th 2010. The two winning questions will be offered a FREE ticket to the forum and the opportunity to pose their question to the speaker of their choice. A further eight runners-up will be offered a 50% discount to attend the event.

This is an event with some big differences. The speaker briefing is:

“(1) No PowerPoint

(2) Talk about your worst mistakes and what you’ve learned from them.”

Every delegate is being asked to come with a question or problem relating to their business that they can draw on the collected experience of the participants to solve. Active participation is required!