Mergers and Acquisitions in EDA should spark Innovation and Start ups

With the recent closure of the Synopsys Magma deal and the economy showing a bit of uptick and some positive outlook compared to the last 3-4 years, I believe it’s time for some of the creative minds that find themselves looking for new opportunity to consider starting their own point tool as well as IP companies.

Many of these people are some of the brightest in technology worldwide yet will discover some new realities of the current job market. The first is that openings in EDA and related areas such as IP are few and far between; the other being that the industries in the Valley that are growing and hiring rapidly don’t have the interest or intelligence to open their doors to veterans of areas besides their own. This is a grim reality of the new wave of mobile, cloud, SaaS, and enterprise companies that are garnering the funds from VC’s and hiring as if it were the boom all over again. I have experienced this myself more times than I can even count in the last year or so as Ive attempted to break new ground and transfer my skills in recruiting for software start ups into these areas, just to be ignored or often times told that they want the “7-10 year” candidates that are hungry and connected to people in their space and grew up using social media and mobile applications in their daily lives at least beginning in college if not sooner.

Intellectual Property (IP) is another avenue for the jobseeker to explore; perhaps a lower cost entrée into starting a smaller company that can realize success and notoriety sooner than building a software tool from the ground floor. There have been recent successes with design services companies that own their own IP and were able to be recognized as a business worthy of acquisition

I am not a technologist, I refer to myself as “buzzword compatible”, but I do understand as the geometries of the circuits get smaller and smaller there are new challenges that need to be addressed. Through the ups and down of the economies and the consolidations that have taken place, the fact still remains that innovation will come from smaller teams of people with an eye on invention as opposed to corporate security and politics. And these pioneers will in fact resurrect the cycle that we’ve all relied on over the years of growth via acquisition. There are private avenues of funding and friends of families and people who have tasted success that can be instrumental in helping these new entrepreneurs.
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Richard Goldstein has been a recruiter and advisor to startups in EDA and IP since 1984 and has placed many of the executives and leaders at startups within this industry. He has also held corporate contract recruiting positions inside companies such as Magma Design Automation, Kilopass Technology, and Xilinx.

Rich@dacsearch.com