In an intriguing juxtaposition of events, yesterday the Financial Times ran an article on Andrew Rickman, founder of components vendor Bookham, who took the company from upstart start-up to stock market darling. Yesterday, of course, being the day that a rather more world-weary Bookham agreed to merge with Avanex (see Bookham, Avanex: the merger is on).
Rickman, says the article, started Bookham from a spare room in the family house, and named the company for the village where it all started. His new venture, as an angel investor, is also run from home, only this time home is a stately pile in a Wiltshire village called Rockley. And guess what? His latest company is called Rockley Ventures.
Rockley Ventures has 10 investments including Green Biologics, an industrial biotech company whose technology converts waste by-products into fuels, Blue Whale Mail, a software start-up that aims to better BlackBerry with e-mail services that run on standard mobile phones, and silicon photonics company Kotura (see Kotura adds Bookham founder to board).