EP11 - The Questions That Still Don’t Have Clear Answers In University Venture Capital

Universities have become increasingly active participants in venture capital.

Across Europe and globally, institutions are launching funds, supporting spinouts, and building more structured pathways from research to market. This evolving segment, often referred to as University Venture Capital (UVC), is no longer experimental. In several regions, it is already well developed, with experienced teams, established processes, and a growing track record.

Importantly, meaningful progress is already happening.

There are strong regional ecosystems.
There are universities operating highly sophisticated investment models.
There is a growing body of research attempting to map and understand this segment.

And yet, when viewed from the inside, particularly from the perspective of operators or investors, a different layer of reality becomes visible.

Not a lack of activity.
But a lack of coherence.

Where the Friction Begins

When building a university venture capital fund, the first challenge is not capital. It is orientation.

Even relatively fundamental questions can be difficult to answer with confidence:

• How do comparable UVC funds structure themselves in practice?

• What constitutes strong performance in this specific context?

• How are IP, ownership, and governance handled across institutions?

• What does a credible path to follow-on fundraising look like?

The answers exist. In many cases, they are well understood within individual institutions, networks, or regions.

However, they are rarely structured in a way that makes them broadly accessible or comparable.

As a result, the starting point varies significantly across the ecosystem. Some institutions build on accumulated experience and strong peer networks, while others develop their models with more limited visibility into how similar challenges are addressed elsewhere.

The consequence is not stagnation, but uneven progress, and slower system-level learning than the underlying potential would allow.

A System with Depth, but Limited Comparability

Traditional venture capital benefits from relatively well-defined reference points: portfolio construction models, return expectations, fund dynamics, and exit timelines.

UVC operates under a more complex set of constraints.

Financial performance matters, but it is not the only dimension. Institutional impact, knowledge transfer, and long-term strategic alignment also play a role.

This creates diversity in how funds are structured and evaluated.

Across institutions, there is meaningful variation in:

• IP and licensing frameworks

• Equity expectations

• Governance models

• Relationships with the university and external capital

This diversity reflects institutional context, and in many ways, it is a strength.

However, it comes with a trade-off.

Without a degree of comparability, evaluation becomes inconsistent, particularly from an LP perspective. And without consistent evaluation, capital allocation into UVC remains more complex than it needs to be.

Access Without Accumulation

At first glance, the ecosystem appears well-connected.

Practitioners are open to sharing insights.
Conversations happen across conferences, networks, and bilateral exchanges.
A growing body of research is attempting to map the space.

However, access to information does not automatically translate into structured learning.

Much of the knowledge remains distributed, contextual, and embedded in individual institutions.

Insights circulate, but they do not consistently accumulate.

Over time, this leads to repetition: similar questions reappear, and similar solutions are developed in parallel across different ecosystems.

This is not a failure of collaboration.
It is a structural limitation.

An Uneven Landscape

The UVC ecosystem is not homogeneous.

Some ecosystems have reached a high level of maturity, operating with clear structures, strong connections to external capital, and repeatable processes for spinout creation.

Others are still building these capabilities, often without clear external reference points.

This creates a landscape that is not weak, but uneven.

From an LP perspective, this unevenness introduces an additional challenge: even when high-quality opportunities exist, assessing them across different institutional contexts becomes difficult without a shared frame of reference.

Where Systems Meet and Misalign

UVC operates at the intersection of two fundamentally different systems.

On one side, academic institutions are focused on long-term knowledge creation.
On the other hand, venture capital is driven by speed, risk allocation, and financial return.

Where these systems align, outcomes can be exceptional.

Where they do not, friction emerges, most visibly in ownership structures, licensing agreements, and governance frameworks.

In some cases, this does not reduce the quality of the underlying opportunity.
But it increases uncertainty around execution.

And uncertainty directly affects external capital participation.

Data Is Growing But Not Yet Connected

UVC does not operate in a data vacuum.

In recent years, a growing number of high-quality reports, datasets, and research initiatives have emerged to better understand the segment. Universities, research groups, and industry platforms are all contributing to this effort.

This is a meaningful and positive development.

However, these initiatives often apply different methodologies, definitions, and scopes. As a result, they provide valuable insights, but not always a consistent basis for comparison.

The issue, therefore, is not the absence of data.

It is the absence of a consolidated data layer.

A layer that would connect existing reports rather than replace them, aligning key concepts where needed, and enabling different datasets to be interpreted in relation to each other.

Because ultimately, the question is not just what data exists, but:

Who needs it and for what decisions?

• LPs require comparability, risk-return profiles, and portfolio-level understanding

• UVC funds require operational benchmarks and structural reference points

• Policymakers require aggregated, interpretable insights

Today, these needs are only partially met.

Not due to lack of effort but due to fragmentation across otherwise valuable initiatives.

A more connected data layer would not replace existing research.
It would increase its utility.

And in doing so, it would directly influence how capital is allocated into UVC.

In its current form, UVC is visible but not yet fully legible as an investment segment.

From Activity to System-Level Learning

UVC has moved beyond experimentation.

It is now a defined and growing segment of the broader venture ecosystem.

The key question is no longer whether it will develop.

It will.

The more relevant question is:

At what speed and with what level of efficiency will it evolve?

Because ultimately, the rate of evolution is determined by the rate of learning.

And learning, at scale, requires structure.

Conclusion

The current limitation is not the capability.

The ecosystem already contains strong institutions, experienced operators, and high-quality deal flow.

What it lacks is a shared layer that allows these elements to interact—and learn—as a system.

Not to standardize.
Not to centralize.
But to enable accumulation.

Because the real leverage is not in improving individual actors in isolation.

It is increasing how effectively the system learns.

Timecode:

00:00 Uni VCC Begins

00:28 The Lonely Founder Problem

01:52 Key Challenges to Solve

03:07 What Uni VCs Optimize For

04:39 Deep Ecosystems Breakthrough

07:17 Building the Coalition Platform

12:04 Infrastructure and Co-Investing

14:57 Policy Makers and EU Workshop

17:39 Who the Platform Serves

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:

Thijmen: Yeah. After Uni Prisma, we are now building Uni VCC.

Karoly: Yes.

Thijmen: How did we get there? This University Venture Capital Coalition. You're coming from OEVC, right? The Obuda University venture capital firm. How did you figure this out?

Karoly: So I wanted to solve my problem, and my problem was when we launched the first university venture capital fund in Hungary and in the region, my problem was that I didn't have access to other university venture capitals, their experience, their best practices. And I felt alone and I wanted to learn. So I thought there must be a platform, like a collaboration between these players where they share knowledge and experience. But, to my surprise, I discovered there is none.

Thijmen: But you spoke also to some university venture capital firms across the globe.

Karoly: I did. So I reached out and I asked them. That's how I got to know that there is no coalition between them. But for the record, all of these Uni VC players were very approachable, very colleague-like, supportive. So they tried to help, they tried to explain how they are doing what they are doing, but it was not like a structured layer. And I went deeper and deeper into this problem, like, what about fundraising? How do you fundraise your next fund as a university venture fund, or how do you fundraise your first one? And how do you know that actually you have a good running fund?

Thijmen: Yeah. How do you benchmark?

Karoly: Is there any best practices on university IP protection, IP policy? Are there any best practices or market expectations on the equity stakes that the university holds or doesn't hold in their spin-off and so on? So these are the main ones. And yes, there are some studies, reports, conversations on this, but there is no—I couldn't find a systematic approach to this. And so that's when I got a little obsessed with this problem, and I couldn't believe that there was nobody who wanted to fix this the way I wanted to. And that's the origin of the problem discovery in my journey.

Thijmen: Could you share a bit more? Because normal VCs, they have a clear thesis, but they also have a clear goal. Basically, it's just making, basically, the funds that they're getting from the LPs and to make that either double that or triple that or quadruple that in size. What is that for a university VC?

Karoly: Yeah. So they have the same goal in terms of returning the investment for the LPs, but they have additional goals. Any university has basically two major goals: education and research. It's that simple. But when innovation comes into play, then you have different KPIs. Basically, you want to lift up your university and your researchers, provide them a route for commercializing their research to reach commercial success. Why do you need that? Because financial returns, visibility, and the attractiveness of that university from other researchers and investors will increase. So by launching their own fund, they can achieve both goals. So that's the overall logic.

Thijmen: Got it. And when we founded the venture studio, Uni Prisma, we realized this gap in the market. And we actually had this German ecosystem builder called Deep Ecosystems. They gave us a lot of tools and insights, right? They really banged our heads together and like, "Really, how does this work? How would we like to build this up?" what is your best insight from this? What is your most memorable thought about it?

Karoly: Yes. So as you said, we started with Uni Prisma, which is co-building startups on a venture studio model. So we have experience in building early-stage companies. And then I had this, let's say, obsession with the university venture capital topic, which I shared with you. And then I discovered actually—I was, not invited, but the CEO of OEVC sent me a note that, "Hey, do you know this initiative run by Deep Ecosystems?" That's their name, the German ecosystem accelerator program. And honestly, I did not know them. And it turned out that they run an ecosystem accelerator program in Hungary. And then we applied, we got accepted into the program, and we went through the first intensive two months. And my key takeaway was basically they put our thoughts into structure. So this gave us a focused approach, a systematic focused approach to reach our goal.

Thijmen: Yeah. For me, it was very confronting that we were thinking completely in a wrong perspective, that the clients or the customers or the consumers that we wanted to tackle, that actually it was not them, it was the whole ecosystem. We were thinking from a venture studio perspective perhaps, or from a supplier-to-a-client, but we are neither the client nor the supplier, but we are building the ecosystem. So that was a real eye-opener.

Karoly: I like that input because, yes, almost all the players in the startup and VC ecosystems, their target audience is either the startup founders or the venture capital funds, maybe accelerators. So you either are fundraising for a startup, or you are a startup fundraising for yourself, or you are a VC investing and fundraising for your own funds. That's it. But what we do is different. Basically, we connect these players. And again, a very important differentiation: there are many platforms who connect players, right? There are very good ones. Usually, they connect startup with investor. So it's a fundraising-focused approach, which is fine. Our initial approach is to connect the university VC funds as a second layer. Yes, obviously, we want to invite the portfolio of these funds, the spin-offs, to make themselves visible for other university funds and for investors from the market.

And a question to you: how do you see Uni VCC or the coalition? How does it connect to Uni Prisma, or is it connected or is it a separate thing? How would you explain that?

Thijmen: Well, in a way, Uni Prisma, when we started, it was a venture studio. Well, we talked already earlier about how we got to know each other and how we actually got to build this venture studio. But then we realized that it was not really a venture studio. It was rather like a venture building something besides just the studio itself and the clear structure of the studio. And currently, out of that actually came the Uni VCC.

That said, Uni Prisma is still more of a service company. I would say currently we are very much focusing on the Uni VCC, but Uni Prisma can become more of a service company. Uh, think about accelerators, think about the venture studio concept itself, how to help startups, how to help the spin-offs basically commercialize—all of these elements, basically. And but it's not an end; there's no limits to this. It can become anything, basically.

Karoly: Yeah. So I think what we would need to explain to our audience is what is the gap that we are trying to fill. What is the shape and form and size of this gap that we believe we can fill from a European perspective? Mario Draghi placed it nice in the reports—I think last year it was—that we need to be more competitive in Europe. But from a global perspective, it would be a fantastic opportunity for VCs to have a good deal flow, very highly focused, but also for LPs that they can see what's happening basically in this research sector.

On the other hand, it would help current university venture capital firms to see if they're actually doing well, because there are a couple funds doing extremely well and a couple that we don't really know if they're doing well enough. And also for a lot of universities that do not actually have a VC yet at this moment and that might like to start one. They might have a TTO or might not, or it really depends on how they are looking at this. And this is, I would say, that this is predominantly the focus of the university. What do you think?

Karoly: Yeah, definitely. And what I think is missing is the infrastructure. So it's not like—just to clarify—we are not here to tell a whole industry how to run their business. There are outstanding universities, overachieving university venture capital funds, and there is a whole momentum I think in the whole academic sector that more and more of the players would like to launch their own fund or fundraise for their second or third or fifth fund.

So the gap what we are trying to actually build is the infrastructure. And when I say infrastructure, it's not just a network, right? It's an actual digital platform. This is important, I think, because that's the glue, that's how you execute on the network. So we need a platform that is neutral, very safe, and extremely easy to use for all the things that you have just listed: connection, swapping blueprints, playbooks, co-investments.

It's a fragmented market, right? Some players are doing co-investments, but most of them are not. What if all the universities could see each other's deal flow and co-invest? What an opportunity it is. And then also if we provide this infrastructure, as you said, we can provide a single entry point for all the market VCs, like all the non-university VCs. Like, "Here is a single entry point through which you can actually have access to an up-to-date deal flow," which is deep tech mainly, right? And also for LPs, like all the institutional LPs or even family offices. Now they could see all the upcoming funds—first-time funds, second-time, and so on—could be a huge opportunity again.

And we should also mention the policymakers, which is another, I think, as an industry—as a niche industry but very powerful industry—we need to make sure that policymakers hear what's happening and they are informed. And again, it's happening, and I will share some of the experiences from last week from Sevilla.

Thijmen: Yeah. Because you went earlier this year. You went to Sevilla, indeed.

Karoly: Yeah. So the European Commission, with the Joint Research Centre, invited me for a policymaking workshop. And I presented our journey and what we are about to launch. But what was very exciting is to learn from all these key stakeholders, plus researchers, Uni VC funds, and institutions from all across Europe, actually approving all the assumptions we had.

And what I saw was that there were like 10, 20 outstanding researchers presenting their findings from university venture capital, but there was no merging or meta-analysis of this data. So policymaking is in a bit of trouble, like it's not very easy to draw the right conclusions from different sources. Yes, you have data, but you have different research methodologies. It would be great to actually take this to a next level and say, "Let's sit down with the policymakers again and say, let's define what kind of input you need, what kind of data you need." And now we, as a community, we can provide that data in the structure you need it.

Why is it important to give precise and up-to-date input for policymaking? Because then they can actually support the cause. They can actually do things that will actual change and will be impactful. And one example is EU Inc., a new kind of legal entity for startups all across Europe. That's huge. Or to name another one: the new $500 million euro fund for late-stage investing initiated by the EU. These are components of this ecosystem, and how much more we could achieve as an ecosystem if only we pulled together and shared the data.

Thijmen: So if I may summarize you, basically the platform that we're building is for universities with or without a VC, for basically ecosystem players, research, but also accelerators. It is for policymakers to see what's happening actually in this world. It's for market VCs, and it's for LPs that might be interested in the higher meta-layer.

Karoly: Exactly.