Last week, I had a running e-conversation with several folks – from academia, the angel community, bloggers, reporters analysts – about what new EDA and IP startups were out there. “New” being less than a year old.

One person more or less said,  “aren’t you working with a new prototyping startup?  That’s about the last one I’ve heard of.”  Another person, the academician, said that there were none, that the startup groundswell was in cleantech and software apps.  No one could think of a single “new” startup in our space.

Why?  Not why they can’t think of any new startups, but why none are out there or are so hidden that this group knows of none?

Lots of reasons come to mind.  Yeah, the big guys offer all-you-can-eat licenses and crowd out the opportunity for startup point tools; the financial community doesn’t see a decent ROI and don’t fund EDA and IP (although it looks like EDA can once again utter “IPO”  without derisive eyeballs rolling); EDA is mature and there’s only incremental improvements to be made, thus no great leaps any longer.

So are we wrong?  Are there new startups out there?  What technology areas?

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