18. Hermann Hauser
Amadeus Capital Partners
Job description: Co-founder
Age, Nationality: 52, Austrian
Web address: www.amadeuscapital.com
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A serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist, Hauser has helped shape the European tech scene for more than 20 years. His vehicle for defining the future is Amadeus Capital Partners, a fund management company that helps start-ups with early stage finance, business development and management recruitment. The fund has set up a mobile center in Cambridge, England, to, among other things, help Vodafone Airtouch test third-generation applications. Although his influence spans Europe, Hauser has a soft spot for Cambridge companies. Recent investments include Cambridge Silicon Radio (see No. 25), which makes chips for the Bluetooth platform, and Cambridge Broadband, which is developing a high-speed broadband wireless access system for areas without cable, fiber optics or digital subscriber line technology. A physicist by training, he cofounded Acorn Computer Group in Cambridge in 1978 and built it into Britain's most successful PC-maker. When the company faltered after Micro-soft's ms-dos operating system swept the world, Hauser went on to become vice president of research at Olivetti, establishing a global network of research laboratories. Since then he has founded some 30 European technology companies, including numerous Acorn spin-offs such as ARM (see No. 8), which licenses micro-processors for portable devices.
The vision thing: "A higher market pene-tration of mobile phones will allow Europe to out-innovate the rest of the world."
Forward spin: In the future, Hauser believes the emphasis will be on wireless data connectivity and the ability to deliver content to multiple platforms.
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