I sometimes work in a University in a department with a tech-heavy focus, and am fortunate to have friends in the tech/ engineering industry. One of my school friends runs an engineering firm which they founded a decade ago (straight out of uni) and now employs 100 people and is going through Series C. Another friend runs an IT security start-up (which could be insanely disruptive), going through Series B. Various others work in interesting high-flying places. This is a long way round to say I hear about things socially which sound very interesting, and then I frequently get pissed off I can’t invest in them (along with questioning my career choices). So here are three:
Reaction Engines Limited
Start with the biggest, oldest, and possibly most well known, Reaction Engines Limited (1). A literal moonshot investment. They were founded in 1989 by three engineers who were ex-employees of Rolls Royce and BAe. Back in the day one worked on Project Daedalus (a UK design for a fusion-powered starship), and then together on the 1980s Horizontal Take-Off and Landing (HOTOL) spaceplace – particularly it’s rocket motor which could switch from air to vacuum (2). They developed an engine and associated pre-cooler, however details were covered by the Official Secrets Act (no shit). There were a lot of technical issues, the European Space Agency weren’t interested, and without them BAe, RR and the UK Gov pulled the plug (3). The main issues were around the heat exchangers, pre-cooling the air going into the engine. After BAe and RR canned the project, the lead engineers set up RE to continue development around the patents and OSA. They have spent the last 30 years developing the heat exchanger tech, including some massive technological and materials achievements, to a point where it is now doing static test firing in hypersonic conditions (4). They have investment from the British Gov, DARPA, and quite a bit from BAe. Given this, and the limited nature of the firm, I suspect what they’re telling the press is a bit off what is actually possible (5). Are they profitable? No. Are they likely to be any time soon? No. Could they produce a dramatic change in my lifetime? Yes.
TL:DR – UK company developing world-leading heat exchange and rocket engine technology to develop spaceplanes with US and UK gov interest.
Yasa Motors
These were founded in 2008, as a spin-out from Oxford University to develop electric motors (6). They developed a different form of electric motor (revisiting very early designs), Axial Flux over Radial Flux, which has 4x the power of standard electric motors used in EVs for half the weight and size (7). Essentially most electric motors in the world have the same basic principle; the coils are wound around the shaft (so radially) with a gap, and apply electromagnetic force in a turning direction to that shaft along the field lines, as per GCSE physics (I found myself pulling out the Right Hand Rule here). Yasa flip this, where the axis of flux is parallel to the desired rotation (8). They recently (July/Aug 2022) got bought out by Mercedes-Benz (9). Think this is probably a win for MB, as they will be able to licence the tech to people like Tesla (based on patents), or take a huge lead in power-to-weight and torque in electric vehicles.
TL:DR – UK company developing world-leading electric motor technology, now bought out by Mercedes-Benz.
Riverside.fm
Founded in 2019, this is an Isreali software developer who have a recording/ podcasting/ streaming service that works regardless of internet connection quality (10). I’ve come across a couple of media types using this for remote interview/ streaming recording, as it saves and records the content locally at higher quality. It’s also used by an enormous list of household name media outlets for their recording work. A work-around for the shit-quality of Zoom/ MS Teams calls, with a great UI. They finished a Series B round in April 2022 for $35 million and are growing like a weed (11). I remember a colleague using Zoom for a video call about five years ago, and this feels like that. I guess their main issue is how big can their market be (given they seem to have mostly cornered the business-side), and competition from Streamlabs (just streaming) and open-source stuff like OBS (more hobbyist than business) (12).
TL:DR – Israeli software dev for streaming and remote recording in high quality for broadcast.
Other Nonsense
I’m deliberately not discussing the shambolic government/ financial mess, because everyone else is. Here are some bits from social media I enjoyed:
August 2022 Finances
Behind as always. Checking the assets and liabilities:
These are taken, as always, from my Beast Budget spreadsheet. I saved just over 26% of my salary in August. Some of this was a one-off bonus for some locum work, which got swiftly shifted into the emergency fund. Keen eyes will notice further churn. I sold my old daily driver for £1000 locally, not bad considering I paid £2000 for it in 2014. I’ve kept accurate spreadsheets of all the costs, which I’ll share at some point. We also updated our estimated valuation for our house, and hence equity (valuation minus outstanding mortgage). Some absolute nutjob recently paid £100k more than the previous ceiling price for a, albeit seriously extended and tarted up, house a road over from us. This has pushed up the ceiling price, and hence what estate agents are asking. How long can this last? Difficult to know. We’re not in one of the really overblown areas, and we haven’t seen the insane price rises of the south east. Maybe we don’t have as far to fall.
Budgets:
As compared to my four year back-calculated mean monthly spend:
- Groceries: July £186, August £153, budget £220
- Eating out & Takeaway: July £60, Aug £129, budget £50 – I thought this looked wrong, but no, we actually just socialised a lot. Whoops
- Transport: July £210, Aug £170, budget £330 – The new daily merely sips the crushed dinos
- Holiday: July £0, Aug £0, budget £40
- Personal: July £0, Aug £62, budget £120
- Health: July £52, Aug £52, budget £150
- Misc: July £67, Aug £767, budget £215 – This is the start of a new big spending line, nursery fees
- Work fees: July £323, Aug £160, budget £265
In the garden:
Harvested potatoes and tomatoes, everything else ignored. Boo.
Cheers,
The Shrink
References:
- https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/reaction-engines-ltd
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_Engines
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_HOTOL
- https://reactionengines.co.uk/high-mach-propulsion-technology-testing-begins/
- https://reactionengines.co.uk/delivering-the-future-of-uk-hypersonic-capabilities/
- https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/yasa-motors
- https://www.yasa.com/technology/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_flux_motor
- https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/61050-34#overview
- https://riverside.fm/
- https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/442463-59#overview
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OBS_Studio