An Evening with Alex van Someren May 26, 2009

Get inspired by successful serial entrepreneur Alex van Someren, Entrepreneur in Residence at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.



Alex grew up near Cambridge, became involved with local firm Acorn Computer as a young teenager and left school at 17 to join the company, where he worked on the BBC Microcomputer and its successor the Acorn Electron.

With his brother, Dr. Nicko van Someren, he established a business selling computer hardware products within their father's company, Aleph One, in 1986. They went on to set up their first independent business ANT Ltd, now ANT plc, in 1990 to produce networking products including Web Browser software which they licensed to the Oracle Corporation. ANT plc was listed on the London AIM market in 2005 and is now positioned in the embedded software market for IPTV.

In 1996 he and Nicko founded nCipher with venture capital backing to develop internet security products using cryptography. nCipher plc was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 and counts major banking, finance and government among its customers around the world. It was sold to Thales SA in 2008 and returned more than £150 million to shareholders.
Alex has authored several books on computer applications and microprocessors, including the first published book on the ARM RISC chips, which was also translated into Japanese.

He still lives in Cambridge with his wife and three children, where he is an active member of the local entrepreneurial community. He is currently a Non-Executive Director of Inkski Limited.