TECH TALK: BILL MAGEE spoke to a California-based digital leader who made the 10,000 mile round trip to attend one of Scotland’s top investor showcases
Silicon Valley’s major-league digital entrepreneur – or “technology scout” as she prefers to be known – Deborah Magid had no hesitation to once again make the 10,000-mile round trip to resume her long-standing relationship with EIE in Edinburgh. But she still wishes the organisers hadn’t skipped last year’s event.
Continuity is crucial for her and other VC/angel investors and the key for a country like Scotland is not to pause in ensuring the country’s tech efforts are noticed on the global stage. No matter the state of the world economy.
Until last summer Ms Magid was IBM director of strategy overseeing £16 billion of funds. I caught up with her ayt a gala dinner at Dynamic Earth, marking the climax of the two-day Edinburgh event.
Recalling the EIE (for the uninitiated “Engage Invest Exploit”) no-show last year, she said: “they should have done it last year, but better late than never.”
Ms Magid now runs her own show as CEO & founder of Innovation Now. Significantly, she is corporate venture capitalist-in-residence (CVC) for the Valley’s largest mentor and investor network, Pitch Global.
During EIE24 she announced the launch of an initial $50 million dollar investment fund specifically of interest to limited partners.
Ms Magid remains, as she puts it, “razor focused” when seeking that next bright investment prospect and had covered EIE for a solid decade before the pandemic.
This time around scores of investors checked out the pitching event’s cohort who, to be expected, majored on artificial intelligent advances.
One theory behind EIE’s absence in ’23, when other tech events continued, was anxiety over the likely absence of investors, especially from overseas who were still feeling the pain of suffering substantial financial losses around the pandemic.
Ms Magid remarked that mergers and acquisitions continued to be made but initial public offerings dried up. It was certainly true in the bellwether United States where the number of IPOs fell by a mighty 90%.
“M&A was still happening but IPOs were down.. even so, there is still a lot of cash around,” she said.
She couldn’t help but recall her initial reaction, on discovering the country’s premier tech start-up get-together was not going ahead. “Boy, don’t you miss those days? That was the most fun event. I went ten years in a row,” she said.
She holds the University of Edinburgh in high regard, ranking it in an elite list of academic institutions including MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and UCD Trinity, and relished the prospect of discovering something “exciting” at EIE. “I know it is a lot of work, but it is so worthwhile for everyone,” she says.
For her, Scotland’s tech sector responded well to the digital disruption that is presenting new opportunities for entrepreneurs. She had originally contacted me this time last year from her base in California which is now home to a Scottish techscaler hub, providing fast-track advice and funding for a dozen early stage Scottish firms.
Danny Helson, head of EIE programme delivery and investor relations, said: “It is just great to have EIE live once again where people can meet face-to-face and get things done.”
This column is supported by digital transformation company Exception UK
I don’t think IBM invested in any start-up in Scotland during Deborah Magid’s many years of attending EIE as IBM director of strategy – if that is so, it demonstrates a remarkable contradiction between her words and her actions.