The Diagnostic Is Well Known. The System Is Still Incomplete
European tech transfer has been studied, reported on, and debated for over two decades. The bottlenecks are identified. The diagnosis is well known. Reports keep piling up. The system is still incomplete.
Christophe Haunold has been inside that system for 30 years. Chemical engineer by training. He built and led one of France's regional tech transfer companies. He served as president of ASTP (the Association of Science and Technology Professionals in Europe). He has coached countries from Turkey to Italy on organizing their tech transfer operations. He now works at the University of Luxembourg, where he created the central tech transfer office. In a recent conversation, he walked me through patterns he has observed across institutions, countries, and decades. What follows draws entirely from that exchange.
The Question That Opens the Door
Christophe does not use the word commercialization when he first talks to researchers. He asks something more basic: Would you like other people to become interested in what you do? Would you like your scientific results to become useful to someone?
Nobody answers no.
Public researchers in Europe did not choose their careers to make money. They chose them for intellectual freedom. For time to think. For time to make mistakes. Those are the exact conditions you surrender when you start a company.
Once the answer is yes, the conversation about pathways (company creation, licensing, collaboration with industry) can happen on the researcher's terms. Motivation comes first.
The Fantasy of the Researcher-Entrepreneur
One assumption persists in European innovation policy: every researcher should become a businessman. Christophe called it a nightmare, and I agree.
Some researchers have the ambition and the skill to build companies. Many do not. The goal, as I said during our conversation, should not be to push everybody toward entrepreneurship. It should provide the right environment for those with this ambition.
Until the year 2000, it was illegal in France for a public researcher to hold private interests. The law changed, and an entire supporting infrastructure followed. But as Christophe noted, there were many fantasies, even among certain political figures, about every researcher becoming a businessman. It does not make sense.
His framing was clear: one of the challenges is to find the right teams to organize the transformation of scientific results into something useful for society. And once people agree that something must be done to transfer this knowledge, you can discuss the right pathways.
What Makes a Good Founding Team
I asked Christophe directly: " What makes a good team? His first keyword was complementarity.
He has seen teams consisting of one person. Not a team. He has seen teams of several people from the same lab with the same profile. A team, but not a sufficient one.
The pattern that works: involve people with industrial, business, or finance profiles alongside the scientific founders. Do it early. Christophe said this helps them understand constraints that are not scientific and technical. It is also important, as he put it, not to leave the people alone and to bring them confidence. Many universities now provide awareness raising and training for PhD students. But once they step into company creation, they will have to manage non-technical problems very quickly, and they need support for that.
PhD students and postdocs are most likely to engage in company creation, partly due to ambition and partly because not all of them will secure permanent positions. But if you leave them alone, most of the time, they do not have all the necessary skills. That was not part of their training.
Christophe raised a related problem: too many cooks in the kitchen. The core founding team gets surrounded by advisors, mentors, and coaches. If the quality varies, the noise becomes a hindrance.
I raised a connected point during our conversation. There is a huge difference between advice and participation. Once you have stakes, skin in the game, and commitment to co-build alongside the researcher, the dynamic changes. I saw this building as a venture studio and, before that, a consulting firm supporting researchers with their startups. Advisors are still needed. But at least one person in the team should be able to prioritize and balance advice against execution.
How Researchers Attract Talent
Most researchers do not attract business talent on their own. Christophe was direct about this: some have enough personal energy that people want to follow them, but that is the exception.
In practice, researchers either bring people from their own networks (friends, former colleagues) or expect the ecosystem to provide support. Then, as Christophe noted, they have to accept it. It is a question of trust.
Investors sometimes bring what Christophe calls "clever money." Capital that comes with networks. People with industrial skills and finance experience. Sometimes, what he described as shadow staff: an entrepreneur-in-residence or a co-manager for the launch.
In France, BPI France and the regional tech transfer companies have played a version of this role. Christophe made the point specifically: he likes to work with people who have tried, failed, and succeeded. Experienced people can also demonstrate what they are doing and teach at the same time, he said. Somebody who has the experience.
The TTO: Compliance Office or Strategic Tool
A TTO, or KTO (Knowledge Transfer Office, the term ASTP uses), is by definition an internal administrative function within a university. That said, not all technology transfer structures sit inside the institution. Some are externalized, some operate as private subsidiaries, and some take other legal forms. The structural question of how to organize this function is, as Christophe made clear, a political one.
ASTP runs a training program called “Organizing Your KTO for Growth and Success” on how to build and organize this function within an academic institution. Three points stood out, starting with alignment. As Christophe put it, IP is only a tool. A TTO is only a tool. The question is, why do I need this tool? The first thing is to align with the institution's, the region's, or the country's strategy for innovation. And to align with the research team's priorities and motivations.
Second, resources. Most TTOs consider themselves too small. A complete team needs competencies in IP and legal, communications and marketing, science, and finance and many other skills such as negotiation.
Third, differentiation. You cannot approach a large technological university the same way as a small humanities university. The goals, means, and expectations will be different by definition.
Regional TTOs and Mutualization
The resource problem has an answer: mutualization.
In France, one tech transfer company was created per region (three in Paris), each serving multiple universities and research organizations. The pipeline became large enough to justify a complete team. The volume of cases allowed people to learn from failure and develop real expertise across different fields.
If the pipeline is too small, you cannot attract the right people. You cannot train them on real cases. You will not have the resources for a full team. Mutualization can take different forms. As Christophe described it, you can centralize everything for the region or mutualize certain functions. IP management could be centralized. Marketing activities could be shared. It is a question of finding the right degree of integration.
The same logic applies to university venture capital funds. I see universities wanting their own fund, their own entity. If the deal flow does not justify it, the fund will struggle. Christophe agreed: in small countries or smaller regions, the deal flow is simply too small to attract investors.
The Investment Readiness Gap
Christophe's diagnosis on why spinouts struggle to attract VC was precise: most of the reasons are linked to maturity.
He described founders who talk to the wrong type of investor for their stage, or who pitch with the wrong content. He stressed that you do not pitch the same way for a TTO as for an investor. You first have to convince the TTO that you are the right one to create a company that will exploit the IP. Then, separately, you have to convince investors. Different audiences, different presentations.
He gave one example: a potential company already in discussions with large international industrial partners, unable to provide even a first demonstration. As he put it, they killed themselves. Industrial people do that once, and then it is over.
I raised a connected point during our conversation. I call it investment readiness. It does not matter what the founder thinks is attractive about the startup. The only thing that matters is what the investor thinks. Founders consistently miss what actually matters to investors. I saw this pattern across the three VC firms I helped build.
IP Strategy and the University Equity Debate
How much equity should the university take in exchange for contributing IP?
We discussed this at length.
Christophe's position: an initial five to ten percent currently appears to be an acceptable and reasonable range to many stakeholders. Oxford and Cambridge have revised their approach in recent years. Switzerland recently changed its terms, causing disruption. The principle he advocates is speed. If you have a critical mass (50 deals per year, say), you can offer a ready-to-use process. Two percent royalty or five percent equity. Take it or negotiate something different. Christophe was clear: nowadays, many universities and many founders spend far too much time negotiating about uncertainty. He would not fight over five versus six percent. Nobody cares at that stage.
The worst situation: founders fighting the university from the start, which is counterproductive. The university and the spinout are, in principle, on the same side of the table. The university's main objective is impact, not IP revenue. But for legal reasons (the IP was funded by taxpayers), they cannot give it away.
In Denmark, all ecosystem players sat around one table for several months and negotiated a shared framework. In the Benelux, similar initiatives exist. When stakeholders define the rules together, the process accelerates.
Domain-Specific Investors
Christophe expressed a clear preference for topical investors. When an investor in a specific domain talks to a researcher in the same field, their understanding improves because they share the same keywords and have a feel for the situation.
He gave one example from the building industry. The decisive factor for IP there is not patents but standards. Standard essential patents operate on a completely different logic and timeline.
If a standard takes 15 years to organize, a five-year patent horizon is meaningless.
Christophe said he would be very happy if, when presenting a potential project to a fund, the answer could be: "good project, not for us, here is where you should go."
Or: "We work together with a partner who covers what we don't."
What Stays With Me
The diagnosis is well known, and reports are piling up.
After 15 or 20 years, the system is still incomplete. Christophe said this almost in passing.
The bottlenecks are documented: insufficient TTO resources, cultural differences across countries and regions, high heterogeneity among institutions, and a lack of integration across steps from lab to market.
Christophe has seen this from the inside for 30 years. His approach: sit on the same side of the table as the researcher and find conditions acceptable to future investors, to the company, and to the university. Because, as he put it, the main objective of a university is not to make money with IP. It is to create impact.
Timecode:
00:00 Meet Christophe Haunold
02:30 From Chemical Engineering to Knowledge Transfer
06:04 Europe's Innovation Landscape and ASTP
11:38 Motivating Researchers to Commercialize
19:24 Building Teams and Attracting Business Talent
23:22 Capital Gaps and TTO Decisions
31:28 Why University IP Goes Unused
35:15 Investment Readiness and Licensing Strategy
40:45 University Equity and Fast Track Frameworks
48:05 Shared TTO Models, Deep Tech, and Closing Thoughts
Links:
Karoly Szanto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/
Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/
University Venture Capital Coalition: https://univccoalition.org/
Guests:
Christophe Haunold: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophe-haunold/
Transcript:
Karoly: I wanna welcome Christophe Haunold. Thank you for joining us on the show. Christophe, would you please introduce yourself to the audience because you wear many hats and what best describes you at the moment?
Christophe: Well, thanks a lot for the invite. Yes, indeed. I'm involved in the global knowledge of ization issues. I've been working for 30 years now for universities, and I've been also working for professional networks. So the main key words in my day life, I would say, are around innovation based on science and in particular based on the public research.
Karoly: Great.
Christophe: So, I've been organizing and creating different offices to support this innovation. And that goes through knowledge transfer from public research labs towards existing companies or newly created companies that we call the startups or the spinoff.
Karoly: So can we say that research commercialization is also under this umbrella of activities that you're focusing on? That's another word too.
Christophe: Yes. It is really in the scope, seen from the public research side, commercialization is one option. Because what we are looking at is really, or looking for, is really the impact that we might create on the society. And this impact might be commercial. So we might create economical impact but also the impact on the society. So social impact, impact on environment, on health. Wellbeing. And this is wider than just commercialization. And this is important because the public researchers sometimes are not so keen on talking about money making business. At least in Europe.
Karoly: I would be very keen for you to introduce a little bit more about your career. How did you end up in this segment and what was your journey so far?
Christophe: I'm not sure to, to give you some conclusions because my career is not ended yet.
Karoly: Yes.
Christophe: There will be no final conclusions
Karoly: for sure.
Christophe: So I'm an engineer by training. I'm a chemical engineer and after my diploma in Toulouse in France. I started a PhD thesis. Always about chemical and process engineering. And after that, when I got my PhD, I went to work in a French embassy
Christophe: In Australia. So that was really interesting. And in the embassy I was working for the scientific service and that was about intelligence, economic, so information about science and also the start of the knowledge transfer issues and collaborations between public sector and private companies. And then when I got back to France, actually I started to work for the university. It was a more technical university, and I was in charge of industrial relationship. So industrial liaison. And that was to organize collaborations between public researchers and private companies. And then came the issues about the industrial property production and the licensing. Years after we started creating companies. It was not so fashionable at that time. It was even in France at this time. It was illegal for, for, was it for public researcher to create a, to have private interests. So then there was a big change in the law. That was in 2000. And then we began to build supporting ecosystem and that took years, and this is still ongoing. So I've been based in Toulouse for 30 years, but always working at the European level in this professional association. So I had the occasion to work with colleagues in different countries. And then we created, um, also private tax transfer companies in France with the support of the government. That was in the years 2010, 12. So there were actually this idea that was the idea of having a private company to make business. Because the assumption was the universities were not able to do so. So the public sector was not able to talk with private companies.
Karoly: So this, uh, company were not affiliated with the universities, uh, in terms of ownership, or
Christophe: they were, the governance was fully public, the money was fully public as well. And so the shareholders were the local universities in the given region. The state, the French state, and the research organizations, you know, in France we have the universities and research institutions. Yeah. And so I created the one for the region around the todo. And that was a very interesting, uh, uh, experience, um, to, to manage one of these companies because the stakes were very different from the universities, even though the, uh, the shareholders were public research parties.
Karoly: Would you say that was the impact of that initiative was also that tech transfer as a way of structuring university IP became a leading topic within the academic sector?
Christophe: Definitely. Yes. I think coming from the states in particular, there was this political thrive to transform this excellent research we had in France and in Europe. And we still have into some into commercial success because we've seen that in the States and in other countries, Israel and so on. But, uh, in Europe we always, uh, get this challenge. How do we transform our knowledge and our excellent scientists work into something useful for the society and by useful, many people think jobs, money growth. We don't have the time to talk about this hypothesis, but, uh, we suppose that innovation leads to growth and growth leads to happiness.
Christophe: I'm not sure of that.
Karoly: Okay. Okay. Uh, we can get back to that. Um. The A SPT, uh, grew from that initiative or is, um, is a separate route?
Christophe: Yes. So this well, let's say the European Commission was really interested in all these issues very, very early. And so they supported different projects at the time.
And one of these projects led to the creation of this European network called A STP Association for Science and Technology Professionals, I think, if I remember well. And that the objective was just to get professionals meet. Exchange good practice and provide mature training.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Okay. Um, this is very efficient. Uh, it's a rather small community. We are talking about maybe, I dunno, 10,000 people in Europe doing this job. Um,
Karoly: it's not so small. Yeah. But
Christophe: it's not so big. Yeah.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Okay. If you compare to the number of researchers
Karoly: Oh yeah,
Christophe: for sure. And you can find this also in the research institutions. It, it, you can also find this, uh, in research institutions. Mm-hmm. Um, if you compare the number of researchers and the number of support people in the tech transfer offices, um, you can see that the, the job is quite difficult. We have to deal with many people that marry different people, uh, very often in different fields, of course. And you know, that knowledge transfer might be extremely different. Uh, if you're talking about, uh, it about health, about, uh, software, about, um, new materials, AI today, quantum, very complicated topics.
Karoly: Yeah. So. Through this organization and 10,000, uh, I don't know how it's maybe not the number of members you meant. No, it's the number of professionals,
Christophe: yes. The um, um, for instance, I mean, there is a cost to, to be a member of course. And for instance, typically in one tech transfer office, maybe 1, 2, 3 people might be members of the STP. So, I think that we are now about 3000 people, members of this association.
Karoly: And, uh, you acted as a president of the organization, so I assume, uh, you had access to, um, a great number of different playbooks and, and blueprints and best practices, and also discovering some of the systematic bottlenecks, uh, in that segment. Um, and I'm interested in before anything, um. Because probably our audience, uh, is familiar with tech transfer offices and, uh, IP commercialization and uh, and university venture capital. So we all have our assumptions, our learnings, uh, but, uh, somebody with your experience, um, what is the one thing that, uh, you learned that would surprise even experienced professionals in this sector?
Christophe: It depends on the period you consider, because the, what is still surprising to me is that the diagnostic is well known. We got many studies, reports are piling, so we know where the challenges are, and after 10, 15, 20 years, we still have not the, the perfect system. And that might come from cultural aspects, cultural approaches, and that might come also, um, from the very high, um, heterogeneity of the European situation. Yeah, okay. When you consider different countries or even different regions in the same countries and different institutions, you can see that the, the way to approach this, uh, issue and the, the solutions, um, might be very diverse. Yeah. So we, we know the bottlenecks, basically, it's a question of motivating the people, public researchers, why would they care about. Creating, uh, impact on the society. Because it's part of their mission, because they got a personal interest. It can be very intimate reasons why they engage with them. Mm-hmm. But it's not really an obligation today. So we got to motivate these people, and then we have to organize the support for them to do so, because it's not easy. We, we know it takes time, it's lengthy, it's risky, and this is not always very good for their career. So we, we have to find very clever incentives to, to bring these people on board.
Karoly: One thing that keeps coming back to me in certain discussions is the assumption that all researchers should commercialize their research, which is actually not the case. And I think the overall goal shouldn't be to push everybody to become a businessman and run their own business. Rather to provide the right environment and opportunity for those who have this ambition. Is that, do you agree with this or you, you have a different angle to that.
Christophe: You are very right with the fact that, um, the first objective of a public researchers is not to do business or to commercialize. And so for instance, when I talk for the first time with the researchers, young or older, um, I almost never talk about commerce commercialization. I always ask the question, would you like that other people
Karoly: mm-hmm.
Christophe: Get interested in what you do and would you like that your, what you pro produce scientific results, um, become useful mm-hmm. For somebody? And nobody answers no.
Karoly: Yes, of
Christophe: course. Ah, and this is the, the real question because mm-hmm. Um, the, the people choosing this, uh, career, um. They like some things that you find only in public research. Mm-hmm. Certain freedom, um, time, time to think, and time also to, to make mistakes.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Okay. And so this is exactly what you're not going to find in a company.
Karoly: Hmm.
Christophe: Especially if you're supposed to lead the company. To manage company.
Karoly: True. Very different pressures and timelines. Yes.
Christophe: And this is why also I think there were many fantasies even in the, in the, in the mouth of certain political people.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Ministry for research, dreaming and to me would be a nightmare of having every researcher becoming a businessman. Doesn't make sense. No
Karoly: way.
Christophe: It's, no. So the one of the challenge we have is, to find the right teams. To organize this transformation of scientific results into something useful for the society. And then once the people agree, that we have to do something in order to transfer this knowledge, then we, can talk about the right pathways. To do so some of these pathways involve, companies, even new companies. And then we talk about what about creating a new company? It doesn't mean that the researcher will be part of this creation, and in any case, we have to define it to explain what are the potential roles for public researcher into a company.
Karoly: Yeah. And also, I really like this approach that we shouldn't take it, as a default that the researcher is part of the, spinoff, let the researcher decide, exactly based on their ambition. Maybe he just wants to license, uh. His IP together with the university maybe, or maybe he has ambitions or even skills to, you know, uh, build a company. But, uh, I agree. I think first comes the motivation and then you can channel it. Okay. So let's talk about, um, the stage from where, uh, a spinoff is created. And of course, uh, it's almost, um, overused term that, uh, investors invest in the team, but it's so true. Um, you need the right set of talents and mindset within the team. Um, so what are the, the typical patterns that you have discovered over your experience? What are the, what makes a good team a good team?
Christophe: That's a very complicated, uh, question.
Karoly: That's, that's a million dollar question. Yeah.
Christophe: Yes. Um, maybe the first key word I would use is, uh, diversity complementarity. Alright. Um, I've seen teams made, um, out of one person, this is not a team I've seen teams made of, um. Several person from the same lab with the same profile. This is not a team.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Okay. This is a team, but not a sufficient one. So, um, as soon as possible you got to involve this technical and scientific people with, uh, other types of profiles, typically with some industrial or business
Karoly: mm-hmm.
Christophe: Or finance experience. Um, and that will help them very soon to understand some of the constraints, uh, which are not scientific and technical, right? So this is very important and this is also important not only for the efficiency of the process, but also to bring confidence and not to leave the persons alone. This is us to, to take, typically we will, um, consider PhD students or young doctors postdoc because they are the most likely to engage in creation of the new company for diverse reasons.
Maybe motivation, their age, their ambition, and also the fact they're not going getting, all of them are not getting a permanent position.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: So they will also have maybe to create their position and that might be exciting for them to do so. Um, but if you leave them alone, most of the time they don't have all the skilled necessary to create a company. And this is normal. This was not part of their training. Even though many universities now provide, um, awareness raising
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: And trainings even for PhD students. Mm-hmm. Um, and then they will have to manage very quickly, um, non-technical, uh, problems. And they will have to, to find solutions and they really need support. We have many, uh, advisors, mentors, and sometimes there are too many cooks in the kitchen. And that's also one issue we have when building a team. You have the core team that might be the founding team for the companies, and you have all the people around. It's very difficult to qualify to, to define the, the, the, the good quality of these persons. And if you leave the founders with too many different advice of different quality, then that might be actually more a hindrance than an help.
Karoly: Absolutely. One, one thing, uh, I discovered, um, building a venture studio was, and previously building a consulting firm, uh, supporting entrepreneurs or researchers building their startup, was that there is a huge difference between an advice and, uh, participation. And once you have stakes, uh, skin in the game, uh, and commitment that you are actually co building along with the researcher, like you might be a business person or entrepreneur, or even, uh, a researcher who has already walked the yes, the, the way on experience guys exit funder.
Christophe: Yes.
Karoly: Uh, alumni. Um, that makes the whole difference. And yes, still you will need, um. Advisors for sure, but at least there is somebody in the team who can prioritize and, uh, you know, find the right balance between advice and execution. Right. Yeah. So how do you, how, how do researcher teams attract that kind of talent? Because there is a different, uh, cultural and mindset issue, so,
Christophe: well, usually they don't,
Karoly: they don't, right.
Christophe: Um, some of them will really be, um, attractive to other because they have this energy mm-hmm. And you trust them and you, you want to follow them. But this is not the general case. And, um, either they bring along people they know from, you know, friendship, uh
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Former colleagues, their own network.
Karoly: Yeah,
Christophe: exactly. Or they expect that the ecosystem is going to provide this kind of support. Mm-hmm. And then they will have to accept it.
Karoly: Yeah. That's the hard part.
Christophe: Yes. That's, so, it's, it's a question of trust. You have to demonstrate that the people you bring alone are skillful. And I like to, to work with people, uh, who tried and failed
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: And succeeded as well. So, uh, entrepreneur or, or, or people with some industrial experience mm-hmm. Is very useful. Of course. And so we, we spend. Time and energy also to convince the researchers that they should not stay alone.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And they need additional support. Mm-hmm. And some of the investors actually, um, bring what, what I call, uh, uh, clever money. So they bring money. Okay, that's fine. It's their money or money they manage. So they should be involved in the success of course, but they can also bring their own networks.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And that means, um, people with, uh, industrial skills, uh, finance again and so on, and maybe, uh, shadow staff. Yeah. So they can also bring people who could act as an entrepreneur residence or, um, a co. Manager for the launching of the, of the company. And to me this is really precious because experienced people, they can also demonstrate what they're doing and, and teach at the same time. Sure. Uh, somebody likes the experience very simply.
Karoly: I was gonna ask about the entrepreneur in residency programs, um, 'cause sometimes, um, VCs, investors facilitate this, but sometimes universities, I don't know.
Um, the situation in France, uh, is it something RDS program run by universities to attract the business talent, the entrepreneur talent, and match them with the researcher team?
Christophe: I'm not so sure about, um, um, this. Sort of scheme in France now. 'cause I left France five years ago. Mm-hmm. And I'm still interested of course, but, um, I think this more, um, brought by the network, especially because innovation in France is, uh, hugely supported by the, the French government, by the state. And we have a sort of centralized, um, bank for innovation and investment, the bp, France, and I think they bring along. Many, uh, um, potential
Karoly: mm-hmm.
Christophe: Entrepreneurs in residence and this, uh, tech transfer accelerating companies I mentioned before can also provide such people. So it's a question of network, and I know that many universities also try to have their own database mm-hmm. Of potential support resource person like that. Um, and I know also that's sometimes the, the Ministry of Economies involved in that.
Karoly: Okay.
Christophe: In certain countries, yes. Because in, in many countries actually, the Ministry for Economy is also providing direct help for companies. Newly created companies. Uh, for instance in Luxembourg. Uh, the, the, the Ministry of Economy has just launched a very, uh, generous program for startups and they can get, um, amount of money, and they are also interested in building this database to attract, uh, interesting people.
Karoly: Hmm, amazing. Okay. So when, when we look at the journey, uh, we talked about, uh, the considerations of a researcher, whether to commercialize or not. If yes, then, uh, the role of tech transfer offices and, and the actual, um, moment when, when they spin out and they form a startup or a spinoff and then forming the team. Um, my, in my experience, uh. The ability to attract external capital is very strongly tied to the right team.
Christophe: Yes.
Karoly: So, and of course the IP for sure, that's a given. Uh, you need some substance, right. Uh, which is the research. But, um, what, what are the capital gaps, uh, the system errors, so to say, uh, in your experience in attracting a VC investment, for example?
Christophe: Well, maybe a keyword could be, uh, the lack of integration, um, before, uh, a team can pitch. Okay. To attract investors, uh, things must be clarified by the, the first, uh, shareholders agreement. Access to ip. Mm-hmm. The rights. Um, and of course the business plan and all the classical tools and, um, some ecosystems are really well organized where you can find this in the uk, the Netherlands, Belgium, I mean, many, many examples like that. And in, in that case, you you'll find situations where the pathway is very clear and integrated.
That means that, uh, the founder and the founding team knows from the start, what, what, what will be the steps.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Okay. And in the ideal situation, they should know who to talk to when and with the, which presentation. Mm-hmm. 'cause you don't pitch the same way for an investor or for a TTO
Karoly: Sure.
Christophe: Okay. And you have to pitch for a tt mm-hmm. Because you have to, to convince the TTO that. You are the right one to create a company who's going to explore the IEP.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And the TTO uh, aim is that, uh, the exploitation of the IP is the best possible.
Karoly: Sure.
Christophe: So you got to consider the market, the market size, um, and the capacity for your spinoff to really develop this technology.
Karoly: Mm.
Christophe: What we don't like in TTOs is the, you know, shelving technologies. Yeah. And we have many failures. We know that.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: So at the end of the day, one of the indicators for the TTO is, have I made the right choice by trusting this founder and trusting the pathway to a spinoff?
Karoly: So when the TTO makes this decision, um, I'm assuming, but, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, my assumption is that usually the situation is not like, uh, there are like, I don't know, tens of, uh, researcher groups all, uh, fighting for the same IP to commercialize. Right. It's usually one, one IP and one team. So, which makes it even a little bit more difficult for the, the TTO 'cause there's, there is no competition, like healthy competition is basically, um, a black and white decision on whether do I believe that this team is gonna execute on maximizing the value of the ip. Mm-hmm. That's the right,
Christophe: yes. Um, you, you are completely right. Um, we don't look for other people than the inventors basically, or the creators of the ip. Um, the competition would be between going to a spinoff or trying to license this IP directly to existing companies. So this is where the, the founder has to convince us that the spinoff pathway is right.
They are the right ones to create this company.
Karoly: And, okay. I, I would love to pick your brain on the IP utilization on licensing because, uh, again, just my experience, I see universities and even research institutions, even corporations, um, having thousands of ips in the, in the fridge. Yeah. Uh, nothing ever happens to that. The idea is great, uh, we're gonna license it, but there is no interface between the market and, uh, and, and the IP stock. Right.
Christophe: That, that should be the TTO.
Karoly: I know, but this interview should be, yeah.
Christophe: Yeah.
Karoly: But isn't it, um, how you say, isn't it, uh, asking too much from a TTO because, I mean, if you have thousands of, uh, IP items, it's very, I mean.
That's not an easy job actually to, to license it. Right. It might be, it might be even more like, maybe not more difficult, but the chances of, uh, the commercial translate this to a commercial value when you compare licensing to spin out, uh, strategy might not be that more risky after all. Uh,
Christophe: uh, so first about the figures, um, you are a bit optimistic,
Karoly: okay?
Christophe: Correct. Uh, the largest, uh, research center in Europe, which is the Resa, the French Center for Research.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: National one, it's got, the portfolio is about maybe 3000 patents.
Karoly: Okay? Okay.
Christophe: So in a normal university, you would talk about dozens,
Karoly: okay? Mm-hmm. Okay.
Christophe: Hundreds max. Mm-hmm. Uh, but still you are right? Uh, most of it is not used. For different reasons. Let's talk about failures. This is always interesting to learn from, from the failures. Um, one situation you might face is that actually it was the IP created was, um, created by PhD student. For instance, the student leaves university. No one is interested.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Okay. Because it was not really in the heart of the lab. Mm-hmm. Activities or, or scope. And so it's very difficult to, to ize something without the, the original inventors because
Karoly: Correct.
Christophe: We are most of the time, very early stage. We are supposed to be innovative. Innovative is new. Plus market new. So we are supposed to invent something really new. So the market is not there. The product is not a product. you still have to convince many people to develop that and without the initial creators it's very difficult. So that's one of the reasons. there are several or other reasons. you got a wonderful solution, wonderful answer, but there is no problem. Okay. Or it's too late or too early or too expensive or, okay. You got, standards, issues, you got, regulations, issues. So there are many, reasons why what seems to be interesting cannot be used. Alright. And in the cases where it's possible to be used, that means that the TTO has identified potential users, end users and intermediaries. Alright.
Karoly: So almost not almost, but exactly. the TTO is act acting as, Almost like on behalf of the, if, you may, own the IP or the ip, as if owning the ip, yes, right?
Christophe: Yes.
Karoly: So like already doing preliminary research on potential Yes. Uh, commercialization pathways, right? Yes.
Christophe: I can give you a, a very, very clear example. Um, in some universities you might have an IP committee.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: All right. And in my recent experience, actually, this committee just looks at potential IP and the decision comes, okay. Should we, for instance, patent this if we're talking about technology mm-hmm. Or should we put the software open source or try to keep it proprietary?
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And for, I mean, to answer to these questions very, very, very soon, you have to ask. Okay. Who would be interested in using that? Who, who would be interested in using that? And that means the first market approach, the first market understanding is there market?
Christophe: What's, what are the segments? And um, and if you don't go this way, then you, you might actually patent anything. Might be good for indicators, but it doesn't make sense.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Yeah.
Karoly: So go, going back to the, uh, sometime, uh, the misalignment or misconnection or disconnection between capital and spinoffs, um, I mean, there are thousands of articles about that, but I'm, what I'm interested is in your experience, what, what you have witnessed are the key, uh, bottlenecks or causes of this disconnection. Why a spinoff? Is in a difficult situation in attracting, uh, venture capital investment.
Christophe: Um, there, there are, as you know, of course, several steps. So the first step is before incorporation and the difficulty, um, for the funders to attract the, the, the first money apart from the friends and family. And, um, uh, what I see is that, uh, they usually meet the, the wrong persons talking to not the appropriate kind of investor or talking to the right persons, but, uh, with a, a very bad pitch. And so it's always interesting to, to listen from the investors, from the VCs or business angel for instance. Uh, why they consider this project is not, uh, investible. Uh, so why it's not, uh, attractive to them.
Karoly: Mm-hmm. Okay.
Christophe: And most of the reasons are, are linked to the maturity. And so we spend really time and energy to explain to the, the potential founders, um, how, how to pitch and not, it's not only about the right format, it's about the content.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: So, uh, at each step before incorporation, and then for the first, uh, raising and then upscaling and everything mm-hmm. Of course you have, you have to adapt and to be very clear about what you're looking for, what you can propose and what you're looking for. Mm-hmm. I, I, I was recently with, um, a potential company and they, they were discussing already with, uh, um, big, uh, industrial stakeholders, really big ones, international ones, and they were not able to, to provide the, the first demonstration. I mean, they
Karoly: too
Christophe: early. I mean, yeah. Just, uh, they just kill themselves by, um, yeah. Making promising and you know, I mean, industrial people, they don't have time for that. I mean, yeah, they, they do that once and.
Karoly: Done
Christophe: then. That's that. Yes. Yeah. So, um, it's, it's very difficult for sometimes to explain to the people, uh, that they have really to have their own due duty diligence about what potential investors they are going to talk
Karoly: mm-hmm.
Christophe: To and what for. Mm-hmm.
Karoly: So I can totally relate to that. Um, um, you know, I, I was involved in, uh, building three venture capital firms, and with that experience, uh, I try to give back to the founders and what I, I call this investment readiness
Christophe: mm-hmm.
Karoly: Is, um, it doesn't matter what you as a funder think about this, the only thing that matters is what the investor thinks.
Christophe: Yes
Karoly: eventually it's a transactional thing at the beginning for sure. So, and it's usually very different like, uh, fund naturally. Have ideas about what might be attractive about their startup, and usually they get it wrong or, um, or they miss out very important things. For example, uh, maybe it's too early for me to, to talk to Sequoia, uh, or Andre and Horowitz. First I need to, I need the tech transfer office. I need a, a precede investment. And then, you know, getting stronger and, and stronger.
Christophe: And it's interesting to note that, um, during the first contacts we have with the potential, uh, funders, we, we talk about IP because as you said before, the TTOs are managing the mm-hmm. Public research IP portfolios. And so when talking about licensing, I, I consider the real licensing negotiation. Um. Must be based on, on the business plan. We all know the business plan is wrong. We, we all know it, it won't happen this way, but this is a basis. And, um, what I try to do with, uh, my own researchers to say, okay, we're going to sit on the same side of the table. This is not a, a real negotiation.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: We have to find the right, uh, conditions acceptable for the, the future investors and for your company, and also reasonable for the university because we have to share the value.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: The, the, the main objective of a university is not to make money with ip, it's to create impact.
Karoly: Exactly.
Christophe: But for, um, balance reasons and also for legal reasons, we cannot give the IP away 'cause it was paid by the taxpayer basically. So we get this to find this balance and in some ecosystems, um, some advisors and some founders. Don't get it this way. So they, they try actually to fight against the university from the start, which is really counterproductive. Of course. Yeah.
Karoly: And how about, uh, the IP strategies? So a common thing we have overseen is that, uh, the universities, um, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for investors to invest in a spinoff because they, uh, they wanna hold on to, uh, a large equity stake within the startup in exchange for the contributing to the I ip. Mm-hmm.
We just recently read some statistics, uh, around that. Um, best practices, new initiative. I think there are very good initiatives. Um, uh, by the way, in, in the Benelux, uh, so now we are in the, in Luxembourg, but in the Benelux there are good ones in Denmark as well and some other, uh, ecosystems, but, there are, the majority of universities still seems to be fine with, uh, taking 20% or even more?
Christophe: No, I don't think so. Really?
Karoly: Yeah, I've seen that. Um,
Christophe: many of them.
Karoly: Yeah. I
Christophe: think exactly. It does work. I, that was, that's not a huge dispute in the uk and they changed their mind.
Karoly: Yeah. So now it's changing. Yes. But only I think in the last, uh, couple of years.
Christophe: Yeah.
Karoly: And then I think the average threshold is now, it's, uh, it's like 15 or, or something like that.
Christophe: I, I would say five to 10.
Karoly: Five to 10 would be the ideal.
Christophe: If, if you talk to Oxford or Cambridge, I mean, you are not in the same position to negotiate. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. If you are a small university in the, in the central Europe and you don't get the same, uh, position and they've been, uh, changing, um, in Switzerland. Mm-hmm. They changed, uh, very recently. And that, that was a, a big of a shock because, um, um, the objective was really to say. We got the critical mass. And this is very important also. 'cause if I'm talking about negotiating, I dunno, 50 deals per year, it's very different from a, a classical university who's going to maybe to negotiate one or two deals per year.
Karoly: Exactly.
Christophe: And so in, in this case, the situation is not the same because for critical mass, you, you, you need to have, um, a ready to use, uh, process. And in that case you can say, okay, I take 2% of a, of the, as a royalties, for instance, or I take five percents of the, of the company and of the story. If you want a quick deal, this is a quick deal.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: If you want to negotiate something different, that might take time. And, and nowadays, many universities and many founders, uh, spend much too, too, too much time, uh, negotiating about uncertainty. Okay? Yeah. Mm-hmm. I'm not going to fight between five or or 6%. I mean, nobody cares reading about that. Yeah.
Nobody cares. Yeah. So, um, I would've been very in favor of, uh, quick tracks, okay? Mm-hmm. Fast lane with reasonable stuff. Now the question, and this is what they, they did in, to have people sitting together again, investors, TTOs research, et cetera, and to define actually the, the borders of the negotiation.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Because if the stakeholders define together, uh, the frame and the method, then it goes quicker. It's
Karoly: very simple. Absolutely. Yeah. This is what they did in Denmark as well. Yes. Pulling all the ecosystem players together at one table.
Christophe: Yes.
Karoly: And then for several months. So it was not a quick one, but, uh, they were committed and for I think four or five months they've been negotiating, uh, coming up eventually with, uh, a framework that that is both acceptable on the academic and on the market or investment part. Um, just recently I'm, uh, I met with some tech transfer offices in my region. Um, and now it's, it's quite a new thing, uh, in central Eastern Europe. Uh, but not very new, but still, yeah, relatively new. And so naturally these players are looking for best practices.
Christophe: Mm-hmm.
Karoly: Um, and I think, uh, also, uh, how to set up your tech transfer offices. Mm. Um, that's, we,
Christophe: we got a dedicated training at A STP on that.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: How to build a TTO.
Karoly: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's, uh, maybe if you could highlight some of the, uh, the top, I don't know, key learning points, like topics of that, uh, training because that's for sure is interesting.
I know it's super complex, but what are. What are the top three, five things you have to get right as a tech transfer office in order to have a healthy framework?
Christophe: Mm-hmm. So maybe first, um, I can give you some insights about the, the global A STP, uh, training offer for, uh, existing TTOs and newly created TTOs.
And one of the training is a, um, we call it oysters because it's how to organize. Mm-hmm. Your, your tech transfer. Um, the main points, uh, to me are related to the, to the political willingness
Karoly: mm-hmm.
Christophe: Of the institution because if you create a TTO, if you choose to develop this activity, uh, that should come from the management and, and directly from the board there, there should be a strategy. Okay?
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Creating such an office is part of a strategy linked to. Um, IP protection and, and, uh, linked to the impact you want to create. Again, IP is only a tool. A TTO is only a tool. The question is, why do I need this tool? So when you create a new tech transfer, the first thing is to really understand, uh, and to align with, uh, the institution or the, the, the, the, the region or the national or the country, uh, uh, strategy for innovation. Mm-hmm. Basically. Mm-hmm. This is the first point, because there are indicators and your resources will depend on that.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And so when you create such a, an office, that will be, uh, an issue to get to researchers because you bring rules. You be, you bring constraints, you bring opportunities, of course, but you will be seen as a new constraint by the researchers.
Okay. So you need the full support of your own management. Mm-hmm. And you need the full support of the research labs management. Okay, this is the first point. The second point is, of course, the resources. So define objectives, your KPIs, and then the resources you are not going to deal. Uh, same way in the big technological university or in a small, uh, humanities, uh, universities. The, the, uh, the goals will be different.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: By definition. Mm-hmm. So this is the first, uh, the first, uh, the second point. Yeah.
Karoly: And I guess, uh, if the goals are different and, you know, the setup is different, that requires a different, the transfer of his team, like some of them will be, I'm just guessing, but some of them might be a bit more, not in a negative way, but more administrative. Um, some of them like talking about IPS and, uh, licensing or patenting, uh, but some of them should be, um, required to be more. Open for enter entrepreneurship or Yes. Commercialization or involving external capital. Right.
Christophe: This is a very important point. Um, it's by definition an internal administrative office.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: The question is, what is the image you want to create around this? Is that just a compliance office? Are you just managing the ip? Or will you be a strategic tool for the university and for the researchers and support actually to do things and to create some, activity, energy. And so this, motivation to do something exciting. Not only, reminding the rules and being, with a legal approach and a risk approach. It should be really organized around the opportunity. And this is a political choice. we have some figures with a, STP network. we can see that most of the TTOs consider themselves too small.
Most of them you will never find a TTO saying, yeah, I'm fine. We are more than enough to do all the job. Because these are complicated jobs with many aspects, as you said. Yeah. It can be IP management, it can be understanding of the market, it can be promoting, entrepreneurship. Providing training, providing advice, embedding, students.
So it's very wide. Mm-hmm. And so you got also to fix your priorities and you, you cannot do, um, everything from the start. You got to think also of the evolution. And in some countries you have, um, um, financial support to do so. In addition to the normal, uh, university budget.
Karoly: Okay.
Christophe: Okay. For instance, in Luxembourg, the, the National Fund for Research, um, had a very interesting scheme for research bodies, for research organizations, including the university. And that allowed, actually, uh, asked to recruit people and I was recruited at Indigenous University to create an a central tax transfer office, and I applied for this, uh, funding. So it's competitive, uh, funding. Mm-hmm. Uh, and this is a very good occasion to, to describe what you intend to do.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And then they decided to fund this project and I got the, my first colleagues this way.
Karoly: Okay. And so some of the tech transfer offices, uh, again, I'm just guessing, but I think, uh, maybe a better way to say it. Uh. Are there tech transfer offices that are not tied to one particular university, but rather covering a region?
Christophe: Yes. Mm-hmm.
Karoly: Can you explain that, uh, that working model?
Christophe: Um, it's based on two assumptions. The, the first one is the critical mass, again, uh, because if your pipe is too small, you get no occasion to attract the right people with the right skills. Uh, you cannot train your, your, your people with real cases, so you can send them away to, to be trained, but it's very different. And, uh, besides you will, you won't get all the resources to get a complete team. Complete team is about, um, ip, legal, communications, marketing, uh, science, uh, finance, and, okay, six people. And many, many TTOs are just two or three people.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Okay. So, uh, the first assumption was that Neutralizations would allow to create more complete teams. Mm-hmm. And this is what happened with this tax transfer companies in France.
We created actually one per region basically. Mm. And of course three in Paris because Paris is Paris. Yeah. But Paris is not France, you know. So, uh, one, one, um, tech transfer company per region. That means around, um, I mean that's several thousand of researchers and there you can get. Reasonable pipe and you, you get a complete team able to provide all kind of services.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And you can learn, you can fail, but the, the statistics is okay.
Karoly: Mm-hmm. And then they have enough, uh, deal flow from several universities. From the region,
Christophe: yes. From several universities and also research organizations. So, uh, research bodies not providing teaching, but, uh, only research. And some of them are topical.
Karoly: Correct.
Christophe: Okay. So this is a French case. Mm-hmm. But I've worked also for the European Commission, um, as a coach for other countries. Um, and so I've worked in Turkey, in Italy as well, in order to help also some, uh, region to organize their TTOs and maybe to neutralize.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: So it's a question of sort of degree of integration.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Either you say, I, I, I destroy everything. I create a central wall for the region. It's not so easy to accept either you say we just, um, mutualize certain functions, for instance, um, the IP management could be recentralized.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: That, that's really possible.
Karoly: Hmm.
Christophe: Um, probably marketing activities can be also shared. So I think this is, um, a very clever move to, in order to find the right, uh, granary, it's useless to try to create a TTO for a very small university, uh, because they're going to, to to have problems,
Karoly: lack of resources. Yeah. Also, um, um, I see it all the time that many of the universities, they want to have their own, uh yes. Entities, not only tech transfer offices, but also um, university venture capital funds.
Christophe: Yes.
Karoly: It doesn't always make sense unless you have enough, uh, strong deal flow.
Christophe: Exactly.
Karoly: Um, then you, you will suffer basically. Or, um, I know it's possible for, um, a university venture capital fund to invest in other universities spinoffs, but I'm not sure, uh, if it's the same situation with the tech transfer office, unless the tech transfer office is, um, a regional, as you explain, um,
Christophe: the, the collaborations between, uh, TTOs is actually very difficult. Um, even in the same countries, uh, in the same country, in a given country. Um, because people don't have time actually for that. So, um, I know the European Commission supports, uh, morbidity and many people are very interested, especially from. Um, newly equipped countries, they want to come in the TTO and to learn or to see, but it takes time. And, and these are very long processes. So if you spend two weeks in the TTO okay, you, you will just witness some of the processes. Mm-hmm. You will not really learn. So this exchange is not, not easy at all. And um, and usually TTOs don't work for others except if it, if it was designed this way.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Alright. Uh, now for access to the, to the funds, I completely agree with you. And we can see in small countries or in smaller regions that we are not attractive for investors because the deal flow is too, too small.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Very simply. Mm-hmm. So it would really make sense to have, um, um, um, a bad equipped, uh, uh, funding body able to work for different universities, but with clear rules. Course. Um, if, if a university fund, uh, tries to work for other universities, there is always a question of governance and the priorities.
Karoly: Totally agree. And I think, uh, if one UVC fund belongs to a particular university in a certain way, universities compete with each other. Um, so there is this, um, bias. Um, um, so yes, I think it's, uh, in, in some cases it definitely makes sense to have, um, um, independent or neutral, uh, entity to invest.
And, uh, you mentioned, um, that it also causes another problem, which is, uh, is more difficult to attract capital from LPs to invest in VCs. Right? Because, um, what they will do. Lp, certainly they will look at the deal flow and, uh, not only because in the first year everybody can produce, uh, a bright deal flow.
The question is, can you repeat the next 10 years, every year? Um, can you produce 300, 500 volume of deal flows, new one every year? That's very difficult. Yes. For, uh, even for a region, it's not so easy. So
Christophe: you, you are, you are right. We've seen that with the creation of the, the tax transfer companies in France, uh, at first, I mean, they were sort of a stock
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Effect. Yeah. Very, very logical. And besides we, we really involved, uh, um, the, the, the researchers and we motivated them. There were, there was a lot of promotion. So the, the, the curve went this way and then. Of course. Um, yeah. Uh, we, we see now some, uh, university funds coming to, uh, universities not equipped with such funds.
And they offer to, yeah, to be part of. I'm not sure that works so well. Uh, we should ask them. And, um, they also are interested in getting in touch with the promising, uh, teams, research teams. 'cause we know in our universities that some of the teams are going to provide ideas again and again. And, uh, it's easier to work with them because after a while they are, they get used to the ways of working together.
Trust has been built. And we can accept the idea of failures because everybody's know, everybody knows that. Um, it's not one party's fault if there's a failure.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: And people tried also. People start to understand how it works and, uh, what are the many reasons for failure? And that's fine to fail.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: If, if you come back with new ideas and
Karoly: then is perfect one day. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So taking it one level higher, like attracting capital. Attracting capital as a researcher for your project, and then a spinoff, uh, from tech transfer office or even before for a proof of concept fund. Mm-hmm. And then as a spinoff from a VC and then A UVC from LPs.
Um, uh, recently we have, uh, had many discussions with various LPs, how they are looking at, uh, UVC as an asset class because venture capital is of course, um, an asset class. But UVC is not so well defined, partially because it's fragmented in Europe, there are different models. Also I, I'm curious how you see this, uh, the lack of shared and relevant data in order to be able to benchmark, for example, between UVC funds all across Europe, but also a platform where, where they can share best practices, uh, in, you know, generating deal flow, um, attracting LPs.
So how do you see the community of U VCs, uh, what's missing, uh, in that direction?
Christophe: Um, I'm not so sure because, uh, they're also in a competition, huh?
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: So, uh, sharing data with the competition is not so, so easy. Um, I'm not sure I can answer your, your question. Um. I guess public bodies can organize a sort of benchmark in a way.
And for instance, the European Commission tries to share this good practice. And for instance, in the knowledge of organization platform, there are some good practice linked to the relation with investment and uh, uh, but I'm not sure they, they put some confidential data on that.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And, um, I'm not sure what sort of data you, you, you talk about because you, you got, you know, data from, I dunno, D room or this sort of, uh, uh, things.
But you are more talking about the way the funds, uh, choose their projects, choose Twin Invest. So
Karoly: yeah, I think there, there are many, uh, aspects to that. One is the, the obvious one, the entry point, like, uh, as a UVC, uh, you have the carrot basically, uh, when talking to a university, like you can explain. Um, if only you fixed your IP strategy, uh, your spinoffs would be more attractive to me.
Right. But you already have an incentive. So I think, uh, sharing, um, what worked in that sense, uh, would be also helping the deal flow and also helping, uh, a little bit the university to be more successful if they want to commercialize. So that's around policy, let's say, um, not on a European level, but local level, like, uh, IP policy, uh, stakeholders or different licensing or royalty models, what worked whatnot.
The second one is, I think, uh, more on the, on the actual model. Like are you covering, uh, uh, a region. Um, a domain, a topic like are you med tech or defense or, uh, I don't know. Uh, ai, whatever it is. Or a combination of those. Like, I'm investing in universities, spinoffs that do anything with agent AI in France.
So that's like, and I think by working together, they would be able to benefit from, sometimes they could share deal flow. Some of them already do it, so don't misunderstand. I think, uh, some the good ones are already, you know, they're in strong collaboration with each other, but it's not like a common thing.
It's not, it's more like, um, I don't know. It's more, it happens by chance almost. Not like, it's not a system. So, and that I think translates also to attracting LPs. 'cause lp either they have a strong connection to a certain region.
Mm-hmm.
Then they will invest there. That's good. We need those. But they are not, they, it's hard for them to define, uh, the asset class and then make educated decisions.
Right.
Christophe: Mm-hmm.
Karoly: Any experience on that side or it's more, it's not, um, your focus area?
Christophe: Um, no, the, the only feeling I have is that, um, I quite like the specialized, uh, actors, stakeholders, uh, for instance, topical.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: Um, I, I get the impression when this sort of, um, partner talk to our researchers, the understanding is better.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: Because, uh, they have the same keywords and some understanding on, on the situation. Um, and even the use of ips can be very topical. Uh, I will just take one example. We have a, uh, some experience in the building industry. Okay. And I realized because I was not familiar with this, uh, industry before that, in that case, well, patterns, that's fine.
But, uh, the, the main, the main thing is, uh, regulations, standards.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: So if you, then we are, we talk about, uh, stand essential patterns, sap Okay. Standard essential patterns. So it's an, um, a very different approach. And if on the TTO side, if you just focus on IP and patents, that you might miss the point,
Karoly: completely
Christophe: miss the point.
Mm-hmm. And besides the timeline are, are very long. So sometimes if a standard takes 15 years to be organized, I mean,
Karoly: yeah.
Christophe: What do you do with, uh, five year patents? Yeah. Remaining. Yeah. So this is the, the main thing I would say. So I, I like to talk with people who know really well. One
Karoly: segment.
Christophe: Yeah. One segment.
Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um,
Karoly: yeah.
Christophe: And it's probably easier to, um, to convince them, but then I would be very happy if, um, when presenting, um, a potential project to, uh, fund the answer would be, oh, that's a good project. Not for us, but
Karoly: Exactly.
Christophe: This is where you can go.
Karoly: Exactly.
Christophe: Or we work together or we got a different, uh, branch.
Stereo Mix: Okay.
Karoly: Exactly.
Christophe: Yeah.
Karoly: And also, I mean, if there are, uh, domain specific investors, as you say, they are more familiar with one particular topic, and therefore, if they, if their due diligence results in a, a positive, uh, reinforcement, a decision like yes, uh, your solution is valid, then that in itself can attract, uh, co-investments because then, uh, you know, they can become a lead investor or, you know, taking all the responsibility of.
Validating and then that can attract, uh, um, yeah, market based, uh, um, co-investors. actually just, uh, today we had, um. A discussion with an institutional lp, which connects to this topic. And, uh, one of the problems, uh, that, uh, the European Union is trying to solve is, uh, late stage deep tech investments leaving Europe. Uh, why? Because they, they can easier attract, uh, capital from, uh, the US maybe Series B and onwards.
So very late stage, very mature. Um, but how do you see that? What, what are the. Incentives or what are, what keeps founders in Europe?
Christophe: Uh, the question of, uh, finding the right funds in is a real one. And I had in mind, uh, I mean there is a belief that, uh, it's very hard for the, uh, for the startup to develop in Europe and just to remain there.
And there, there is a recent study by the Joint Research Center, the JRC of the European Commission, and they studied several hundreds of, uh, of companies of VC backed companies. Mm-hmm. And they found that actually the ratio of, uh, uh, companies leaving to, to find funds in the states or other places, actually it's very low.
Mm-hmm. It's below 5%. I was surprised. So maybe. We need to read a bit more about that. What sort of companies have to, to leave? Um, are they the unicorns? Are they the best ones leaving? But, um, I was surprised because the, the general idea we got, the feeling is that, uh, um, people have to, to, to flee away to find funds.
And I think this is not true.
Karoly: Hmm.
Christophe: Um, but then again, this question of visibility and, um, and trust. If I trust in my OK system, I'm going to create my company here. Mm-hmm. And my plan can be I want to stay here.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: So then what's a choice? There are hundreds of investors. Huh? It's very difficult. The, the, the creators there.
They also have to, to make their own due diligence.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: And it's very strange to hear people say, oh, you know, the vc they, they act this way or that way. I mean, which VCs, they're very, very different ones.
Karoly: Yeah.
Christophe: So a clarity of the offer also from the funding, uh, might be very useful.
Karoly: Mm-hmm.
Christophe: For the funders.
Yeah.
Karoly: Yeah. So, yeah, I think, uh, that's very exciting about the statistics. So maybe it would be interesting to see if there is a difference between, uh, late stage and early stage. Yes, probably there is, but I'm not sure. And also as a next study, uh, sending my love to GRC from here, uh, maybe to, to go deeper into the cases that actually left.
Christophe: Yes.
Karoly: So why, what, what is the real reason there? What, what really happened? What is, is there anything to learn from that? Because that might not be representative to the whole data set. So I'm, I'm not sure, but these are super interesting, uh, uh, parts. Um, Christophe, thank you for joining me today for the conversation.
Christophe: Thanks to you.