Welcome back to our first 60 second interview for 2010! Our first victim interviewee this year is Andrew Mitchell from Informatics Ventures! As part of the IV team, Andrew helps to deliver a range of support for entrepreneurs around the High-tech space: including the MIT Workshops, the annual Engage Invest Exploit showcase, plus supporting a whole load of local events such as Techmeetup.
Andrew started his career in entrepreneurial education back in Cambridge – working for University of Cambridge’s Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning where he designed, built and delivered educational programmes on behalf of the Cambridge-MIT Institute Limited (CMI). Then he moved to sunny Australia to work in a business incubator, before swapping his BBQ for an umbrella to come to Edinburgh.
Oops – I nearly forgot to mention. Andrew is also the person responsible at IV for the Microsoft BizSpark programme – if you’re not on it – make sure you sign up!
Whats your Startup/Business?
Informatics Ventures – on a mission to create Scotland’s first software company of scale.
Give us your company culture in 3 words:
Bipolar, hustle, ambitious.
Whats the next big challenge or hurdle that the company has to overcome?
Delivering a phenomenal Engage | Invest | Exploit 2010 (http://www.eie10.com/) whilst maintaing mental health!
In one sentence, what’s the personal dream?
To help nurture for Informatics in Edinburgh what Akamai is for MIT, what Wolfson Microelectronics is for our Engineering School and what Google is for Stanford.
What do you do for stress relief?
Get on my bike or head for the hills.
Your favourite ‘skint’ meal?
Cheese, chips and curry sauce. Fit fine.
How to you celebrate milestones or awards?
Usually in the pub followed very quickly by forgetting to celebrate and obsessing about the next big task ahead!
What’s your biggest guilty pleasure?
Going out for expensive food and drink with my wife and friends.
And the coolest event you’ve been to?
It’s either: The BT Global Challenge Yacht Race Corporate Sponsors event, Boston Harbour in 2000, I attended whilst working at the MIT Media Lab for BT plc. OR it was the 2004 Growing Business Awards in London when I got to schmooze with Gordon Brown and sit next to Lord Digby Jones and Britain’s ninth richest person, Philip Green.
Name a Quirky fact about yourself:
I was a childhood thespian, having performed in a Harold Pinter play, One for the Road; and sang in the Royal Ballet’s The Nutcracker (http://twitpic.com/gzy9c) and Scottish Opera’s Evita.
Given the choice, would you prefer …
i) Truth or Dare? Dare.
ii) Carrot or Stick? Carrot.
iii) Tea or Coffee? Coffee, with some Amaretto in it.
StartupCafe 
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