EP05 - Great Science, Weak Bridges: Europe’s Commercialization Paradox
Europe is not short on intelligence. It is short on translation.
We translate research into publications. We translate grants into projects. We translate expertise into academic status. Those are valid systems with their own incentives.
The problem starts when we expect those incentives to produce venture fundable companies.
That expectation is the gap.
I recently sat down with Dr. Peter M. Kovacs and Thijmen Meijer to talk about it in a very practical way. Peter sees the bottlenecks from the clinical validation and investment side. Thijmen sees them from the venture building and deep tech execution side. I see them from the vantage point of building ventures, sitting across the table from founders, and watching the same patterns repeat across countries.
If you want to fix the gap, you have to stop decorating the problem. Solve it.
This is a map of what we discussed and what I keep seeing: why university spin-offs struggle to reach visibility, why most do not become investable, and how to change the odds without turning founders into someone they are not.
The uncomfortable truth: most spin-offs are not venture fundable yet
Venture capital is not a reward for effort. It is a bet on a value creation path.
Most university spin-offs have real innovation. But they often lack the structure that makes the innovation investable. Not because the founders are not smart. Because the system trained them for a different game.
In research, the reward is clarity of knowledge. In venture building, the reward is clarity of execution.
In research, your KPI is publications. In venture building, your KPI is proof that the market will pay.
Peter raised a point that is easy to miss: even when the science is outstanding, the journey from proof of concept to a commercial entity is where most teams stall. Not because they are lazy. Because they are operating under the wrong incentives, with the wrong map.
Thijmen added an angle that matters: this is not only about spinning something out of a university. It is about making it ready for commercial markets. That includes the unglamorous work: IP structure, go-to-market logic, milestone definition, and team composition.
Why visibility is so hard for university ventures
When a spin-off struggles to get visibility, they usually assume the problem is marketing.
It is rarely marketing.
Visibility is a downstream effect of three upstream signals:
You know exactly what problem you solve and for whom
You can show progress toward a measurable goal
You have a team that can execute under pressure
Without those signals, you can post, pitch, and attend conferences for years. The market will still not take you seriously.
Peter described something I have also seen: founders often complain about a lack of funding, but the market is not only deciding based on the amount of capital available. The market is deciding based on clarity and credibility. In harder times, that becomes even more true. Investors want to see that funds will be used with precision.
The three failures that keep repeating
Let’s cut through the noise.
Most spin-offs fail to become venture fundable for three reasons.
1) The North Star is missing or vague
I ask teams a simple question:
What is your North Star?
They answer with a paragraph. That is a red flag.
A North Star is a measurable target with time and quality. One sentence. No poetry.
Peter and Thijmen both emphasized the same practical issue: teams often have milestones that look fine on a slide, but once you dig in, they are “multi-interpretable.” That is a polite way of saying: future conflict is already baked in.
If your milestone is open to interpretation, you are building arguments into the future. Clarity is cheaper than conflict.
2) The team gap is unknown
Every team has gaps. That is normal.
The problem is when a team pretends they do not.
In deep tech, the most common gap is commercialization capability. Not because researchers are weak. Because they were trained to optimize for truth, not for markets.
Thijmen said something that many founders need to hear earlier: sometimes the founder needs a CEO, not the other way around. That is not an insult. It is role design.
Peter underlined a reality from his experience: a brilliant scientist is often not the best CEO, and pushing someone into a role they are not built for hurts everyone. The smartest move is often to shift roles so that the founder becomes the Chief Medical Officer or Chief Technology Officer, and the company adds a business leader who can carry out commercialization.
It is not stepping back. It is changing roles to win.
3) The story is fundraising instead of value creation
In some ecosystems, the biggest startup headline is “we raised money.”
Peter said it directly: that should not be the headline.
Fundraising is an input. Not the output.
The output is traction, validation, outcomes, adoption, and impact. The market pays for value, not for excitement.
When founders learn that investors only care about IRR and exit scenarios, they start hiding the real work. They think the science and regulatory path will “bore” investors, so they avoid it. Then investors do not trust them. Then nobody wins.
This is why I keep repeating: do not aim to convince investors. Aim to build value. If you can show a credible path to value creation, you do not need to convince anyone.
Two questions that reset the mindset
When teams are stuck, I use two questions. They seem contradictory. Together, they create clarity.
First:
If you had all the resources you needed, what would you do?
This forces the team to dream without fear.
Second:
What part of that can you achieve without money?
This is where the fog clears.
It is also where many founders realize something uncomfortable: a lot of progress is blocked by focus, not by funding.
When Peter spoke about Central and Eastern Europe, he brought up something very real: in many places, basic resources are missing. Lab access, equipment, and validation infrastructure. That can be a genuine bottleneck. But it still does not justify waiting.
The answer is not always owning. The answer is access.
Lab space, validation, and the myth of ownership
In biotech and medtech, infrastructure matters. If you do not have access to labs, validation, or quality environments, you lose time.
But ownership is not the only solution.
Peter described something I strongly agree with: partnerships and shared infrastructure can compress timelines dramatically. The world has underused capacity. The missing piece is coordination and trust.
This is where a strong ecosystem matters. The right clinical validation partner can de-risk a venture faster than another pitch deck ever will. The right lab access can save years. The right operator can change a team’s execution speed overnight.
Use what is on the boat.
Culture gaps: Europe vs the US vs Asia
Peter brought in a perspective I have also felt: Asia has huge capital pools, but sometimes that money is not matched by domain understanding in deep tech. And even in Europe, the ecosystem often rewards conservative behavior and polished bureaucracy rather than decisive execution.
Thijmen added a reality check: you cannot change a continent’s mindset overnight. So stop expecting founders to do a cultural transformation in six months.
If you want to scale internationally, you need to integrate capabilities into the team. You do that by scouting the right people and merging them early.
And you prepare founders for what happens when they leave their home ecosystem: the room feels different. The confidence test is real. This is why narrative and readiness must be built long before the first international investor roadshow.
A simple framework that works in the real world
Here is the sequence I use, and it aligns with what Peter and Thijmen described from their domains.
Clarify the market pull
Who pays, why now, and what is the painful alternative?Make the IP reality investable
Ownership, rights, and structure need to be clean, or the rest is theater.Define the North Star and milestones
One sentence. Measurable. Timed. Quality defined. No interpretation games.Map the team and execution risks
Know the gaps, name the gaps, mitigate the gaps.Build proof points that de-risk the next step
Not the whole journey. The next step.Build the ecosystem around the venture
Validation partners, operators, investors, advisors, talent, trust.
This is venture building. Not deck building.
Final thought
Europe can outperform. The opportunity is massive. But not with the reflex of waiting for somebody else to make it happen.
If you are a researcher, you do not need to become a salesperson overnight.
You need to become honest about what the market requires, and invite the right people into the boat.
If you are an investor, reward execution clarity, not pitch perfection.
You cannot control the wind. But you can adjust your sails.
And the first adjustment is usually not money. It is a focus.
Timecode:
00:00 Introduction and Meeting the Guests
00:16 Challenges Faced by European Startups
04:44 The Importance of Mindset in Commercialization
07:43 Building Effective Teams for Startups
14:04 Investment Challenges and Opportunities
17:15 The Role of Clear Goals and Milestones
21:40 The Investor's Perspective
25:26 Introduction to Portfolio Companies
25:45 The Need for New Investment Models
26:05 Technological Boom and Efficiency
26:29 Building Companies for Impact
27:30 Challenges in Deep Tech Investment
27:50 Value-Driven Founders
29:12 Operational Models and Risk Mitigation
30:50 Identifying Good Partners
32:55 Scaling Up and Future Goals
33:43 Investor and Founder Dynamics
37:09 Cultural Differences in Startups
46:40 Lab Space and Resource Challenges
49:39 Networking and Collaboration
51:57 Preparing for Global Markets
Links:
Karoly Szanto LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/
Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/
UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/
Guests:
Peter M. Kovacs Personal Website:https://www.petermkovacs.com/
Thijmen Meijer: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com
Transcript:
Peter M Kovacs: So nice to meet you here, guys. Karoly, very nice to meet you here again, and Thijmen, very nice to meet you again after our recent podcast. I'm very happy that you accepted this invitation and I'm very happy to discuss with you about the gaps at startup companies. They are suffering because, within Europe, there are a lot of talented startups and entrepreneurs, but they never reach the visibility and the exit level.
In Asia, there is a lot of capital, but they still never meet. I would like to find the main root cause why this is happening, but more importantly, I would like to discuss today how we can help these companies. UniPrisma Venture Studio and PMK Group, as a clinical validation and investment firm—how can we really support and change this old-fashioned model to make it a bit more effective?
So starting at the very beginning: why is it so difficult for a startup company to reach this visibility level where they can attract investors or any partners—not even investors, just any collaboration partners? What do you see based on your experience over the past few decades? Why is it so difficult? If I'm an entrepreneur with a very good idea—it could be a Nobel Prize or a unicorn company—why is that happening to me? Why can I not reach any of these two?
Károly Szántó: Thanks for the invitation, first of all. Good to be back with you. Maybe today we can recap on our partnership and what we have achieved so far. Answering your question, we just lately learned about some statistics which show that only 22% of European university spinoffs are funded by venture capital, which means the rest don't even reach the level of becoming venture capital fundable or investment-ready. There's a huge gap, and when you think about it, it's also a huge opportunity. If you fix what's missing, then Europe can really outperform many other regions.
Peter M Kovacs: But I can expect this 22% to have a huge imbalance between Western Europe, Northern countries, and Central Eastern Europe. Currently, we are focusing our collaboration on Central European countries and startups coming from these countries. I guess that this 22% is even much lower in these regions.
Thijmen Meijer: Indeed. And also what Karoly said, this 22% is really about getting from a proof of concept into a proper entity and defining the go-to-market strategy—not just how to spin it off from the university, but also how to get it ready for the commercial markets. I think that's also where the key difference is.
Károly Szántó: The other aspect is that we are talking about signals from the market and trying to understand the patterns of what's happening. One very strong signal is that the European Union has assembled, or is in the motion of assembling, a 500 million euro fund for the growth stage of deep tech companies. Most deep tech companies originate from a university. The problem is on a system level. Central and Eastern Europe is behind the average, and all efforts are focused on the ability to commercialize. We have outstanding research in Europe, even in Central and Eastern Europe—great researchers, great scientists, great universities—but somehow they don't find the way to commercialize.
Peter M Kovacs: So we are developing a lot of things which are not completely useless, but aren't really what the market needs. It’s more interesting than useful.
Károly Szántó: Exactly. There are several components to this problem, but my favorite topic is the mindset. We have a cultural heritage in Eastern Europe of waiting for somebody else to make things happen. When you are in the academic bubble, it happens even more strongly because the KPIs and incentives on the research part are publications—very different KPIs than in the market.
Whereas in the US, or in some of the universities that are doing a good job in spinoffs like Cambridge, Oxford, or Munich, they have a pattern and a playbook on how to commercialize, and they have a huge advantage in terms of culture. The base value from where you start to convince a researcher that they need to commercialize is on a much lower level here. For us, we have to assess the team first. It's usually not so much around the skills first, but more on the mindset: are you open? Are you ready to make money from your work?
Peter M Kovacs: Thijmen, you are very strong in the HR field. Is it possible to change this mindset? Is it age-dependent?
Thijmen Meijer: The mindset is first, indeed. There's a different kind of mindset in Europe than in the US, for instance, and definitely different in Central Eastern Europe, where commercialization is almost a dirty word in the research world. Especially in healthcare, they would rather have a publication in Nature than bring it to the market. Then there is the other way around: founders who are keen to bring it to the market but don't have the skillset or competence. They feel they can do it by themselves, but they don't have the ability to take it from zero to one. This is also a mindset issue on a different note: they don't want to have somebody above them. We see that certain founders need a CEO on top of them, not the other way around.
Peter M Kovacs: I recommend many times that great scientists and founders are not necessarily good CEOs because it's a completely different mindset and knowledge set. Usually, we ask them not to step back—it’s not a step back—but to change roles. This gives the possibility for a business-oriented person to become CEO, and the founder becomes the CMO (Chief Medical Officer) or CTO. They do what they are best at, and the CEO brings success to the market.
It's a very common problem everywhere, but maybe in Central Europe, it’s even bigger. Based on our history, we didn't have the chance to learn how to do it yet. But as you mentioned, it's a big opportunity for our collaboration because there are so many good talents. We cannot help everybody, but hopefully, we can find good examples. Could you explain in more detail what the steps are from the beginning? When you find a talented person or a good asset, how do you plan to build them up?
Thijmen Meijer: It should start with the proof of concept and how the patent or IP rights are held within the company. Is it with the university, the founder, or the researcher? What kind of rights does the university have? This makes it investible from a commercial perspective as well. Then afterwards, we need to see the key competencies within the core team and where the gap is. We need to get to know each other to understand the skills within the team. As we saw with one startup last week, they already sensed a gap, but it was not clearly described. With our tools and expertise, we really brought it to the surface.
Peter M Kovacs: Is this evaluation part of your due diligence process or just an initial evaluation to see if it’s a go/no-go?
Károly Szántó: It's part of the due diligence and it has building blocks. One building block is personality analysis. Once that's done, we see how these different characters and people work together. Where is the gap? There is always a gap; it's okay to have one, but it's not okay to not know about it. Basically, what we are doing is identifying risks and then mitigating them with an action plan.
On the team side, we look at internal motivation and personality types. Then we take a deep look at the business plan. What are the milestones, and if they are reached, where does it lead us? Is there a clear North Star? Is it measurable in time and quality? Our goal is to help the team and the investor have the right framework and narrative to create a very clear, concise story so that we all speak the same language.
In my experience, most teams have some kind of KPIs or milestones, but very few can define them crystal clear. It is a very dangerous thing because once they are there, they will write a report proudly presenting to the investor that they reached Milestone 3. But when you dig into it, you see they only met the goals partially. It's a matter of definition. It's better to invest the time at the beginning to avoid such debates later. One thing we are doing is helping—and at the same time, pressuring—the team to have these goals clearly defined.
Thijmen Meijer: I cannot say it better.
Peter M Kovacs: How do you see the investment part? Many founders complain they could reach exit potential easily if they got enough funding, but I don't really think so. In the last year or two, times have been more difficult for startups. Investment volume hasn't necessarily decreased, but the number of companies invested in is much lower. This means bigger ticket sizes going to a smaller group of companies.
University spinoffs and small startups at lower levels have become further away from accessing venture capitalists. Most were relying on research grants which are shrinking year to year, especially in Central Eastern Europe as EU funding reached certain economy levels. Is the lack of access to investment the main reason they cannot move forward, or is it just a part of it?
Thijmen Meijer: I think it's what we already said: having a proper team and knowing your gaps, especially on the roadmap to the North Star. Investors are looking for "smart money" and professional partners who know exactly how to utilize the funds, not just a bulk load of money with a high burn rate and hoping for the best. Money is not free anymore. We believe that with a proper plan and a roadmap that is crystal clear on a granular level, that is the way to go.
Károly Szántó: Adding to that, most founders—and this relates to the commercializing bottleneck—are not aware of what really matters for an investor and for the market. Discussion often starts by asking them to throw everything they think is valuable on the table, and then we help them sort out the values that actually matter. That is often surprising for them. It’s a delicate discussion because we don't want to offend them, but I always say it’s better if you get offended with me than to have a harsh discussion and failure with an investor.
There are two questions, seemingly contradictory, that we apply to help them get out of their mindset bubble. One question that does wonders is: "What would you do if you had all the resources? Money is no issue. What's the best way to go about it?" It's actually not easy in Eastern Europe to get people to dream big; you need to nudge them. But once they get there, they draw a big dream on the table.
Then comes the next question: "What could we achieve out of this big dream which doesn't require money?" Then comes clarity. They discover that many of those things they want to achieve that are valuable for the market don't really cost money. They discover clarity and have to be flexible to twist the story around. It creates traction, which creates value, and company valuation goes up.
Peter M Kovacs: If the company, with our help, realizes and solves these gaps together with the founders, they have a much better chance to get access to funding?
Thijmen Meijer: By knowing yourself, you definitely know where the gaps are. When you know the team, you can do an organizational design later and get a much better understanding of where you are. Maybe you don't need an extra marketing hire because you already have that talent internally.
Peter M Kovacs: So you feel that when you solve these gaps, you build a stronger team with a clear vision, making it easier to get access to funding?
Thijmen Meijer: Absolutely. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a significantly higher chance.
Károly Szántó: One thing: I spent a decade in venture capital and sat on the side where startups were pitching me. One of my guilty pleasures is to ask other investors how fast they actually decide if they want to invest. Most experienced investors make decisions very quickly—the "gut feeling" decision, which is always followed by thorough due diligence to double-check that intuition. But without our preparation, many startups would fail in the first five minutes. You need to be concise and focused to have a compelling story within the first three minutes; otherwise, you don't get the second five minutes.
It's not very difficult to convince an investor if your goal is not to convince the investor. The good goal is to be very focused on how you actually create value and return. If you have a good story on that, you don't need to convince anybody. In our culture, when I read startup news, I rarely read success stories like reaching 2 million euros in ARR; what you read is "we got investment."
Peter M Kovacs: Which shouldn't be the news at all.
Károly Szántó: Exactly. The main news should be that we made a huge impact or improved the lives of millions.
Thijmen Meijer: And just to add to that: what you are mostly investing in is deep tech. Biotech and medtech founders are not typical B2B SaaS guys. They are really good at the research and the science, but not so much at preparing for investors.
Peter M Kovacs: I hope we can prove this is a good opportunity. We started with two portfolio companies and are increasing this number quickly. I always thought about disruptive models because the current conservative investment model is not working. Efficiency is more important than before; there is not enough money in the world to sponsor all companies. We should find the more efficient way of investment—investment is just the last piece. We are not developing companies just for an IPO or an exit only to have the company end up in the trash. It’s important to select companies that make a human impact, especially in healthcare. Do you focus on social impact when listening to a pitch?
Thijmen Meijer: That's why we are in biotech and medtech—not another B2B CRM. We are keen to thrive in this market where deep tech in Europe is undervalued.
Károly Szántó: I think all three of us feel that life is too short to work without true impact. When you are doing something value-driven, it comes across. We want to make money—it's not a charity—but we want to do it by creating value. Peter, your model as a clinical researcher offering infrastructure, validation, and a clinical roadmap together with investment is an execution-centered model mitigating risk. Our joint value proposition is very strong and pragmatic.
Peter M Kovacs: If someone is only focused on the ticket size and doesn't care about the partnering, I already know it's not a good fit. It will be the first and last discussion. There is a lot of "dumb money" in Asia coming from real estate, but medtech and biotech are so sophisticated. If someone doesn't understand why the failure rate is high or why it takes eight years, we cannot explain risk mitigation to them. I see clearly in Asian markets that the majority don't understand; they focus on simpler investments. But governmental agencies and big universities often understand even more than private VCs or angel investors.
We need clear oversight because our time and resources are limited. Our target is about 30 startup companies in the next few years. I think this is a feasible and lucky group.
Károly Szántó: In all fairness, some founders have bad experiences with investors. We met a startup where they only talked about money at first, but when we kept asking, it turned out they had a much more valuable story to tell. They had to learn that we aren't just about ticket sizes. Investors who don't add value have miseducated the founder community to only talk about IRR and exit timelines. They learn to keep research and regulatory topics for internal discussions so they don't "bore" the investor. We need to help them release those right topics.
Thijmen Meijer: I love when investors say, "If a founder cannot do the sales themselves, I don't invest," which basically eliminates all university spinoffs. We like to address that. If the researcher cannot do sales, we can find the finance guy, the marketing guy, and the salesperson to put next to them.
Károly Szántó: Talking about that, where do you actually find those people? In the US, it’s easy to identify "entrepreneurs in residence"—an exited entrepreneur who knows the way. In Central and Eastern Europe, good luck with that. That’s when our network kicks in. We need to actively scout for people in broader Europe who have been there and done that. The best VCs build a community of co-investors, academic partners, and corporate partners.
It takes time and face time to build that trust. Our long-term goal should be this. We need to identify entrepreneurs who are currently running a great medtech startup and are a few years away from an exit. We need to build rapport now before they are bored and looking for the next gig.
Peter M Kovacs: How do you see the potential of Central European startups compared to the US or Asia? Most big minds arrive in the US from Europe; European science has the most Nobel Prizes and best results. But the ecosystem is not working efficiently. Asian markets are coming up quickly with a lot of money, but they are newborns in this field and still learning to use it. US has almost everything but lacks good talent. How can we connect startups here to pick the benefits from Asia and the US?
Károly Szántó: In Asia, the work ethic is on a whole new level—the service level and responsibility for speed and quality is something we can't even grasp. In the US, commercialization capability is next to none. Europe’s strength is a creative mindset, tackling problems in unusual ways. We need to learn from the work ethics of Asia and the commercialization of the US. You don't have time to pick up this culture in a year while running a startup.
The realistic scenario is to scout for partners and entrepreneurs to merge that culture into the team. If you put a startup from Budapest into Boston or Seoul without support, they will suffer because of the culture gap. In the US, you need to be 100 times braver. In Asia, you need to up your game in delivering quality service.
Thijmen Meijer: Regarding mindset, you cannot change a nation or a continent. We cannot have that born-competitive edge the US has. But I read an article about the connection between biotech startups and lab space. They could see that more lab space results in more high-quality startups. What do you think about that?
Peter M Kovacs: In Central Eastern Europe, there is a very significant correlation. Lack of resources is strong in preclinical and laboratory science. I studied at a medical university and worked with science universities in Hungary, and I saw them waiting years just to buy a machine to measure something. Even if you have a patent, you lose years of time.
In Singapore, the government builds huge laboratory buildings and provides them to startups for free or at a low price. This shows that lab access is vital for early-stage startups. However, I made the mistake in my previous experience of spending too much money on infrastructure and I lost everything during COVID. I realized it’s an expensive lesson: you don't need to own it. I can collaborate with different stakeholders much more effectively and spend much less money. If you don't have lab space, you have to find another solution for risk mitigation.
Károly Szántó: What happens with a Hungarian startup after the first two years of TR 3-5? When they reach 6-7, I like to ask them: "Are you prepared to live in another country if needed?" It's better to know in advance. Many confident teams from this region lose their confidence when I take them to Scandinavia or the UK for investor meetings. They become shy and talk through me. There is a lot to do in terms of strengthening their narrative and building up confidence before they move out. We need to hire entrepreneurs early enough—at least a year before going to market—to mix the culture and build the narrative so they are efficient when the time comes.