David Marsden – MINRES Technologies GmbH https://www.minres.com Thu, 27 Nov 2025 07:01:49 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.1 https://www.minres.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/cropped-minres_favicon-32x32.png David Marsden – MINRES Technologies GmbH https://www.minres.com 32 32 Marketing for a Small Engineering Company https://www.minres.com/marketing-for-a-small-engineering-company/ Wed, 12 Nov 2025 07:39:19 +0000 https://www.minres.com/?p=3645

Marketing for a Small Engineering Company


A strategic investment, not a resource drain

MINRES is a well-established and trusted engineering company — small in size but significant in expertise. Unlike startups that focus on rapid growth and investor visibility, MINRES has built its reputation on long-term customer relationships, proven technical capability, and consistent delivery.

Since joining the MINRES team in a fractional marketing capacity in 2024, I’ve often pondered the question: how much time and effort should a small engineering company devote to marketing? The answer depends on business goals — whether pursuing growth, entering new markets, or strengthening industry presence. Regardless of the objective, companies that approach marketing strategically and methodically gain measurable advantages in visibility, credibility, and opportunity.

Like many engineering-led organizations, MINRES has historically focused on technical excellence rather than self-promotion — you might say MINRES has been “hiding its light under a bushel.” But, marketing starts long before any campaign or social post. It starts with a clear understanding of customer needs and how products or services deliver value. Once that foundation is established, communication becomes about defining market position, highlighting expertise, and showcasing the people behind the technology.

MINRES supports customers designing advanced system-on-chip (SoC) solutions — the foundation of automotive, computing, mobile, and industrial systems. These are often mission-critical environments where errors are costly, and reliability is essential. Clients choose MINRES because of the team’s deep engineering expertise and its ability to enhance customers’ design capabilities. Helping the team realise and to articulate that value is a core part of my role.

Working with a company of this scale is uniquely rewarding. It allows for direct collaboration with leadership, close engagement with engineers, and hands-on execution — without layers of complexity that slow larger organizations. It’s fast, focused, and effective.

However, guiding an engineering-focused company toward a more visible market presence takes some cultural adjustment. Engineers are naturally modest and data-driven, which can make it challenging to communicate achievements. The first step is helping teams define their unique value proposition — then translate technical depth into clear, compelling messages that resonate with customers and partners. Persuading the engineering team to share industry opinions can take time.

MINRES possesses an impressive wealth of technical knowledge. My task is to (simply) transform that knowledge into engaging, customer-centric content — connecting the team’s innovation to the real-world value it delivers.

 

Having supported startups, IPOs, and M&A activity throughout my career, I’ve found the most fulfilling work often comes from smaller, independent companies like MINRES. Their autonomy encourages creativity, authenticity, and agility — qualities that can make marketing both effective and enjoyable.

At MINRES, every team member is encouraged to contribute to marketing efforts, from thought leadership to industry presentations. As visibility grows, so does the team’s confidence and sense of shared achievement.

It’s a privilege to support such a capable and forward-thinking team — helping ensure the expertise and innovation at MINRES receive the recognition they deserve.

Learn more about the MINRES team on the new Team page

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]]> RISC-V is a shifting but consistently growing ecosystem – particularly in Europe https://www.minres.com/risc-v-consistently-growing-ecosystem/ Sun, 20 Jul 2025 14:44:47 +0000 https://www.minres.com/?p=2755

RISC-V is a shifting but consistently growing ecosystem – particularly in Europe

Although RISC-V started life over 15 years ago, its prominence and the magnitude of its potential threat to proprietary ISAs has only been truly appreciated in the last five years.


However, as any technology surrounded by such ‘hype’, the companies driving the evolution of RISC-V have had varying degrees of success. In 2025, we have seen some of the proponents of RISC-V fail, be put up for sale, or even floundered. Should we take this as a sign that RISC-V has run its course and is of no threat to proprietary ISAs?

Two changes could be said to have rocked the RISC-V boat in the last few weeks: Codasip is up for sale and MIPS, having refocused on RISC-V in 2022, has (once again) been sold off – this time to Global Foundries, quoting ‘difficulties for private RISC-V companies’.

A year and a half ago (March 2024), I compiled a RISC-V report for one of our customers. My assessment at the time was (to paraphrase myself): “The emerging market of RISC-V IP is projected to grow fast, but it is already highly competitive market. The classical royalty-based business model has traditionally dominated the processor IP market but this is now increasingly questioned by customers. The market is already flush, with several RISC-V IP providers which face strong headwinds –  most likely not all of them will survive.”


The Codasip situation is regrettable, but we don’t subscribe to the EETimes suggestion that it signifies ‘a pivotal moment for EU RISC-V Sovereignty’, nor is it “a crucial test for the European Union’s ambitious goal of achieving digital strategic autonomy, as enshrined in the European Chips Act”.

If the EU’s RISC-V sovereignty is dependent on a single company, it would suggest a serious misstep in its strategic planning. At the end of the day, the Codasip technology and/or the business model appears to have simply failed to sufficiently convince its customers. That is nothing unusual in this industry!

In terms of the outlook for RISC-V, it has already been chipping away at the volume of Arm processors used in each design. That shift is only likely to favor RISC-V. The willingness to adopt RISC-V specifically holds true for design-starts. And the MIPS acquisition by Global Foundries demonstrates what’s likely to become another important trend: foundries and major EDA vendors will benefit by broadening the supply chain for RISC-V, and this will apply extra pressure on Arm.

We have never positioned ourselves as a traditional IP provider – MINRES is not dependent on traditional IP business models. We focus on subsystem solutions, addresses niche markets and uses innovative future-oriented business models. This approach has made MINRES resilient to the expected and current market movements. Any market changes/consolidations in RISC-V will only have a positive impact on our future.

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