LONDON — A two-day conference organized by the European Tech Tour Association and held in Montreux, Switzerland, over Nov. 4 and 5 provided a platform for 30 startups to present to an audience of venture capitalists, bankers and senior industry executives as well as to their peers at similar companies.

The European Tech Tour (ETT) is a not-for-profit association founded under Swiss law by Sven Lingjaerde, a veteran European venture capitalist. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Endeavour Vision (Geneva, Switzerland). This was ETT’s second semiconductor summit, the first having been held in Leuven, Belgium in October 2006.

Alain Fanet (picture right), a director on the boards of network-on-chip company Arteris SA (Paris, France) and Coresonic AB (Linkoping, Sweden), served as volunteer president of the Second ETT Semiconductor Summit and helped manage the selection process. Fanet said the aim of the Semiconductor Summit was to select the top 25 privately-held semiconductor companies in Europe and to help them achieve global expansion.

"In fact more than 260 companies applied and 30 were selected and of those 30 about 70 percent are looking for funding in the next 18 months," said Fanet. He added that in this second summit it was decided to increase the number of late-stage companies selected so that there was about a 50:50 mix (see list below). Indeed one of the presenting companies is still privately-held after having been formed in 1995. Two of the selected companies in 2006 have achieved successful exits, Fanet said while five of the companies who pitched in 2006 were selected to present again in 2008. However, four of the companies who presented in 2006 were denied the ETT platform in 2008.

"The selected companies reflected three main trends," said Dominique Pitteloud, investment director with Endeavour Vision and vice president of the selection committee for the event. "Firstly we can observe the consolidation within Europe of the new leading semiconductor startups, with 17 percent of the companies selected this year coming from the 2006 top 25 pool. The second trend reflects the market evolution to multimedia-centric nomadic consumer devices, with new investments in MEMS, power management, RF and innovative display and geo-localization and motion technology. Lastly, the selected companies highlight the excellence of European engineering institutes with a good balance from all European countries."