EP09 - Building a Collaborative Infrastructure for University Venture Capital

The commercialization of academic research has become a central theme in the global innovation economy. Universities produce breakthrough discoveries across deep technology, medicine, engineering, and climate science. Yet the path from research to venture remains uneven.

Many promising discoveries fail to translate into scalable companies. Capital remains difficult to access. Institutional knowledge often stays trapped inside individual universities.

The problem is not the lack of innovation. The problem is fragmentation.

University venture capital sits at the intersection of two very different systems. On one side is academia, with its long research cycles, public funding structures, and institutional governance. On the other side is venture capital, a market-driven environment focused on risk, speed, and capital allocation.

When these systems operate without coordination, inefficiencies appear quickly.

During a recent discussion with Thijmen Meijer, we examined this challenge through the lens of university venture capital. The question was not whether opportunity exists. The opportunity is obvious.

The real question is structural.

How do we create an environment in which universities, investors, and innovation hubs can operate as a connected ecosystem rather than as isolated actors?

The first step is understanding the system itself.

One of the most striking observations in this sector is the lack of accessible benchmark data. Universities rarely share investment outcomes, portfolio statistics, or operational policies. Tech transfer offices collect valuable information but often keep it within institutional boundaries.

As a result, the ecosystem learns slowly.

Every institution experiments independently. Best practices spread informally. Failures repeat across regions because lessons are not widely documented.

This lack of transparency limits the growth of university spinout ecosystems.

A structured research effort can begin to address this gap. By collecting and analyzing data across university venture funds, innovation hubs, and tech transfer offices, the community can identify patterns that influence success.

Which policies accelerate venture formation?
Which capital structures attract follow-on investment?
Which collaboration models produce stronger spinout pipelines?

The purpose of this research is not academic curiosity. It is practical insight.

Once structured data is available, institutions can benchmark against peers and refine their strategies based on evidence rather than assumptions.

But research alone does not create ecosystems.

The second layer is community.

University venture capital operates in a complex environment where collaboration often matters as much as competition. Investors benefit from shared deal flow. Universities benefit from access to capital and operational expertise. Founders benefit from coordinated support.

Creating spaces where these actors can exchange experiences becomes essential.

Regular summits can allow practitioners to present case studies and discuss operational challenges. Regional working groups can focus on specific sectors such as life sciences or deep technology. Digital platforms can facilitate continuous interaction between participants.

When knowledge circulates freely, the ecosystem becomes stronger.

Over time, this structure can evolve into something larger than a simple network. It can become a coalition that connects the institutional and market sides of venture creation.

Such coalitions have the potential to transform the trajectory of university spinouts.

Instead of isolated experiments, institutions can build on collective intelligence. Instead of fragmented capital flows, investors can coordinate earlier in the venture formation process.

The result is a more resilient ecosystem where innovation moves faster from research to real-world impact.

This is the vision behind the initiative currently being explored with Thijmen Meijer.

The objective is straightforward.

Gather data.
Connect practitioners.
Create a platform that enables knowledge and capital to circulate more effectively.

The long-term ambition is not simply to organize events or publish research. It is to build the foundations of a stronger university venture capital ecosystem.

The most important element of this effort is participation.

Ecosystems do not emerge from strategy papers. They emerge from people who decide to build together.

For that reason, this initiative is open to universities, venture capital funds, innovation hubs, and other actors who believe that collaboration can unlock the full potential of academic innovation.

Progress in venture capital rarely comes from isolated breakthroughs. It usually emerges from systems that allow ideas, capital, and experience to move freely.

University innovation deserves such a system.

Timecode:

00:00 (Karoly) Introduction to University Venture Capital (Karoly)

00:22 Building a Unified Community

01:34 Research and Data Gathering

03:23 (Q to Karoly)Creating a Collaborative Platform

06:13 (Q to Thijmen)Operational Plans and Membership

07:17 Karoly rephrases

Links:

Karoly Szanto LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/

Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/

UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Guests:

Thijmen Meijer: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Thijmen: So Karoly, how did you find out about, this 

[00:00:03] Thijmen: opportunity in the university venture capital, world basically? 

[00:00:07] Karoly: Through my work, um, I started, uh, to build up the first, university Venture capital fund in Hungary and in the region together with, OUVC at the University of Abha, naturally I was curious about the sector.

[00:00:25] Karoly: So I thought, I want to learn best practices. I want to learn, research statistics. Templates, playbooks. So I was doing my research and reached out to many universities, and to my surprise, I found, no formal community or data exchange platform within the university venture capital segment. this is how it started.

[00:00:52] Thijmen: Uh,

[00:00:52] Thijmen: to which universities did you reach out to? 

[00:00:55] Karoly: first I reached out to, I think it was Oxford, but then, to many of the, UK universities and then later to US universities. And what I have found is that they, some of them have, strong partnerships with each other, maybe two or five of them, but they, they're like a little bit isolated from the rest of the community.

[00:01:21] Karoly: The rest of The Players. and then I discovered that there are so many universities that already have, a tech transfer office, but they do not yet have a venture capital firm. However, they are aiming into that direction. They're seriously considering launching their own VC firm, and that's, that's like in the thousands.

[00:01:48] Karoly: So many universities are like that. And they also lack, best practices. So they are also naturally turning towards, the successful players to learn. 

[00:01:58] Thijmen: And what we, what would you say is the difference between a tech transfer office like a TTO and a university vc? 

[00:02:06] Karoly: So from where I see it, a tech transfer office.

[00:02:12] Karoly: Enables, a university research and the researcher team, to commercialize their research in the very early stages. most of these, tech transfer offices, they have some budget to support, to invest, very small ticket sizes just to create the basic structure. And also take care of the IP transaction, which is always a pain point, so that the IP from the university somehow becomes The 

[00:02:45] Karoly: IP of the startup.

[00:02:47] Karoly: The spinoff. 

[00:02:48] Thijmen: Yeah. And how, because we found out that we, there's about 1200 TTOs in, in Europe and about a hundred plus 120 European, university venture capital firms. And, we found out basically that, there's no structured, organization or structured, data platform, on the market, that basically unites these university venture capital, firms. do you see that as an opportunity? 

[00:03:15] Karoly: So there are communities around the tech transfer offices. like we mentioned earlier, there are some micro communities, fragmented communities in the university, venture capital, whereas there is no united platform. So communities one thing, which is I think the heart and soul of uh, anything. but then data exchange should be, structured. through process, and there is no such thing. By data exchange, we mean, structured and relevant data to be shared and then to have access to by the members of this community. And as an example. the best way maybe to explain it, that in the last two or three years, the Venture Studio segment. Experienced, a boom, a revolution in that sense.

[00:04:14] Karoly: mainly thanks to Max Poog, and his team and his initiative. and what he did is basically he, did an outreach, a research gathering data from all the ventures to the OC could find globally, structure the data, publish the data. Formed the community and created a platform for further learnings and data exchange and facilitating connections.

[00:04:41] Karoly: I think that's good.good. direction. I'm not saying it's a hundred percent applicable, but we can learn from that initiative as opposed to the Venture Studio community, there is no such or similar. tool, community solution in the university venture capital segment. And second part of your question was, about the opportunity.

[00:05:07] Karoly: So, now we can dig a little bit more into the statistics. What everybody knows even with that data is that there are some very successful universities successful in terms of number and quality of spinoffs. the amount and number of, venture capital attracted as investment into their spinoffs and number of exits and so on.

[00:05:35] Karoly: There are really successful ones. Oxford is one example. Cambridge another one, MIT, Stanford in the US and so on. so what if the whole European or global, um,university venture capital segment could step up one or two levels, learn from the good ones. that would make a huge impact on, the European economy as well as investments. so there is, a, huge opportunity that the whole ecosystem is missing out on. 

[00:06:18] Thijmen: Yeah. And especially in Europe, we we have a lot of deep tech, innovations and researchers, which is perfectly aligned basically With what we are aiming for. and you, you said about the universities that are, top performers basically.

[00:06:31] Thijmen: like Oxford, also Switzerland, there's one in Germany. did you know that actually in Europe there's only four, university spinoffs, that are unicorns in comparison with the 160 already existing, but there's only four companies.

[00:06:45] Karoly: That's the missed opportunity. 

[00:06:47] Thijmen: Yeah. 

[00:06:47] Karoly: Yes. And another, another eye opening statistic is, 78% of the European University spinoffs never receive, Investment from a market, venture capital. So not from university, but from out, from the market. that's a missed opportunity for the venture capital players.

[00:07:10] Karoly: It's not that they don't want to invest, but there is, there is a bottleneck in the system. Why, why they cannot invest. And we can talk about that later. 

[00:07:19] Thijmen: Mm.

[00:07:20] Thijmen: another, data point on the, size of the missed opportunity is the finding, about top 10 European University producing 33% of the spinoffs. Is that right? And, the median university produces. 0.08%. 

[00:07:40] Thijmen: Indeed, that's a gap of 400, times. Yeah, 

[00:07:44] Karoly: that's a huge missed opportunity.

[00:07:46] Karoly: And I mean, if you look at it from a macro perspective, it's not only about venture capital is the whole economy. It's, creating jobs,you know, innovating, putting actually Europe in a better position globally, strictly speaking from a university perspective, and from a venture capital, it's just, almost unimaginable huge gap.

[00:08:10] Karoly: that is, that the point is that it's possible to bridge this gap because some universities are doing a great job. 

[00:08:18] Thijmen: Yeah. And for us it's the job to put the best practice in. also for universities that don't have a. Venture capital firm at the moment. 

[00:08:26] Karoly: Exactly. 

[00:08:27] Thijmen: How do you see a lot of opportunity here, for universities that do not have, a venture capital firm, but would like to open one?

[00:08:36] Karoly: Yes. I mean, I think the, let, let's take one step back and just look at this, these two. Very different word, how they clash and meet. it's a clash of cultures as well, venture capital and the academia. So universities have basically two activities or two missions. One is, education, the other is research.

[00:09:08] Karoly: And venture capital is all about, making returns on investments. 

[00:09:13] Karoly: and growth for their LPs. So, very different KPIs, very different culture and approach. And oftentimes, when a university is about to launch venture capital fund or even a tech transfer office, the bottleneck is the culture.

[00:09:32] Karoly: And then it's a systematic error at the end because, Academic people usually, and I'm, I know it's bad to generalize, but that's, that's what we see, that it's a different profession to build up a venture capital firm than to be a good researchers. However, there are many great examples, which are exceptions.

[00:09:59] Karoly: There are good researchers who have done outstanding. businesses and investments and so on and attracted lots of venture capital. So it's also possible, but it's not, not your average, spinoff. So,on the other hand, venture capital knows almost nothing about how academia works. I mean, do they need to know?

[00:10:25] Karoly: But there is certainly a gap between the two words. So it's one thing to set up a venture capital firm, but it's another, thing to attract the right talent to run that firm. And those people, most of those people shouldn't come from academia. They should come from venture capital or entrepreneurship.

[00:10:51] Karoly: that kind of a background

[00:10:53] Thijmen: you were mentioning, that there is a gap between the academics and also the VC funds. we have seen quite a lot already on the market, right? how it should not be working. things like, 30%, equity share for the universities, but also, in royalties as well.

[00:11:10] Thijmen: So, 30% of the revenue in royalties. Um, as, as you are coming from, a venture capital world, how do you look at this, from your professional point of view? would you invest in a company that is partially owned by a university and also, is contractually obliged to.

[00:11:29] Thijmen: pay royalties, 30% of it's revenue, in perpetuity. 

[00:11:33] Karoly: Yeah, it's a great question and it goes right into the heart of the problem, which is I think that universities, some universities, end up acting as investors and when you act as investor or owner. And then naturally you, you are looking for some ownership in the spinoff and, because of your contribution, but that's really not compliant with the market.

[00:12:08] Karoly: So most of the venture capital firms, when they look at a university spinoff and they're cap, their equity shares structure, and they see that university holds 10, 20, 30% ownership. They don't even touch that opportunity. It's not, not even a due diligence, nothing. Why? Because now as a vc, now I have a, a founder or a co-owner in the company who works in a very, very different way and what way?

[00:12:45] Karoly: Bureaucratic, slow, and has absolutely different incentives. So building a successful startup is very, very difficult. No matter what. Why make it more difficult? So venture capital is all about assessing and mitigating risk, and that ownership structure is like the biggest red flag it's a no go. So first off, and it also, goes hand in hand with the.

[00:13:17] Karoly: IP strategy of the university. So that's why,if and when universities are brave enough to launch their own venture capital fund, that is already a very good direction because that arm of the university is a structured way to actually invest in spinoffs. Yes, a university venture capital can and should hold ownership.

[00:13:46] Karoly: in a spinoff, but not the university and how to handle this situation before a university has its own venture capital fund. And I think the best way, and we just, seen it recently in Hungary in a university that the university was, I think, smart enough to say. I don't want to hold any ownership in the spinoff. I only ask for a royalty fee of, I think it was only 3%, and that is only when the startup is making revenue or profit, which means is a shared risk and that's the way it should be. It's a shared risk. So. We are all pushing that one spinoff to make it successful because when that happens, then we can all go and harvest. That's the only way, and that's the only compliant way probably with venture capital as well. 

[00:14:55] Thijmen: Yeah, and that's probably also the reason why only 78% of the university spinoffs, get, funding from a professional VC afterwards. so there's just a huge gap there.