The Invisible Infrastructure of University Venture Capital

The Invisible Infrastructure of University Venture Capital

Thierry Heles, founder and editor of "The Next Leap", joins Károly Szántó and Thijmen Meijer for a conversation on the state of university venture capital globally. Thierry Heles has spent 12 years tracking spinouts, university funds, and the professionals who move between them. In this episode, he shares what that research produces: around 108 university-backed funds active in Europe, around 250 globally, a talent pipeline constrained by compensation structures that cannot compete with the corporate sector, European LP capital that remains nationally siloed, and why multi-university fund models are structurally necessary for any fund that needs a viable pipeline. Topics covered in this episode: * How Thierry entered the field and what has kept him in it for 12 years * University fund coverage across Europe, Japan, Australia, and the US * The talent pipeline into TTOs and UVC funds * TTO compensation and why experienced candidates do not enter the field * Fund sizes and LP composition across geographies * Why European pension funds allocate a fraction of one percent to venture capital * The structural case for multi-university fund models * Why university funds require external management and legal separation from the institution The Next Leap: http://thenextleap.is UniVCC: univccoalition.org Timecode: 00:00 Welcome and setup 01:04 Origin of the podcast 02:31 Entering university VC 05:24 What makes it fascinating 07:48 Talent and career paths 11:12 Who leads university funds 15:49 Geography and mobility 17:38 Europe fund landscape 21:14 Global count and Japan 24:22 Cross-border ecosystems 28:47 Late-stage funding gap 29:52 Funding Scale Reality 30:15 Investor Geography Bias 31:36 Multi-University Fund Models 33:11 Building a Pipeline 34:25 Audience and Coverage 36:38 Policy Voices on Air 38:03 LPs and Investability 40:40 Pension Funds Risk Gap 41:37 Europe vs US Allocation 44:35 Incentives and Fee Support 46:25 Talent Paths and Pay 51:57 Fund Turnarounds Lessons 54:13 External Management Best Practice 55:34 No One Size Fits All

The Diagnostic Is Well Known. The System Is Still Incomplete

The Diagnostic Is Well Known. The System Is Still Incomplete European tech transfer has been debated for over two decades. The bottlenecks are identified. The system is still incomplete. Christophe Haunold has been inside that system for 30 years. He built and led one of France's regional tech transfer companies, served as president of ASTP, and created the central tech transfer office at the University of Luxembourg. What follows draws entirely from our recent conversation. The Question That Opens the Door Christophe does not open with the word commercialization. He asks something more basic: would you like your scientific results to become useful to someone? Nobody answers no. Public researchers chose their careers for intellectual freedom and time to make mistakes. Once the answer is yes, the conversation about pathways (company creation, licensing, industry collaboration) can happen on the researcher's terms. The Fantasy of the Researcher-Entrepreneur One assumption persists in European innovation policy: every researcher should become a businessman. Christophe called it a nightmare. The goal is to provide the right environment for those with the ambition, not push everyone toward entrepreneurship. The TTO: Compliance Office or Strategic Tool Three points stood out. Alignment: IP is only a tool, and a TTO is only a tool. Resources: most TTOs consider themselves too small, and a complete team needs competencies across IP, legal, science, and finance. Differentiation: a large technological university requires a different approach than a small humanities university. The structural answer is mutualization. In France, one tech transfer company per region served multiple universities. The pipeline became large enough to build a complete team and develop real expertise. IP Strategy and the University Equity Debate Christophe's position: five to ten percent initial equity is an acceptable range. The principle he advocates is speed. With sufficient volume, you offer a ready-to-use process and stop negotiating over uncertainty. The worst situation is founders fighting the university from the start. They are on the same side of the table. The university's main objective is impact, not IP revenue. What Stays With Me After 15 or 20 years, the system is still incomplete. Christophe's approach: sit on the same side of the table as the researcher, and find conditions acceptable to investors, to the company, and to the university. Because the main objective of a university is not to make money with IP. It is to create impact. Timecode: 00:00 Meet Christophe Haunold02:30 From Chemical Engineering to Knowledge Transfer06:04 Europe's Innovation Landscape and ASTP11:38 Motivating Researchers to Commercialize19:24 Building Teams and Attracting Business Talent23:22 Capital Gaps and TTO Decisions31:28 Why University IP Goes Unused35:15 Investment Readiness and Licensing Strategy40:45 University Equity and Fast Track Frameworks48:05 Shared TTO Models, Deep Tech, and Closing Thoughts Links: Károly Szántó : https://www.karolyszanto.com/ [https://www.karolyszanto.com/] UniVCC : https://univccoalition.org/ [https://univccoalition.org/] Guest:  Christophe Haunold: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophe-haunold/

IP Ownership, Spinout Structure, and the Case of University of Pannonia

University of Pannonia Chancellor Zsolt Csillag and researcher Dr Gabor Jarvas join Karoly Szanto to discuss the IP licensing model the university developed to make its spinouts investable for institutional capital. The model separates property rights from operational ownership. The university retains the intellectual property and receives a royalty on net revenue. The researchers own and manage the spinout company, which holds an exclusive licence to develop and commercialise the IP. Csillag explains the institutional reasoning: why universities that attempt to act as equity investors encounter legal and financial constraints they are not equipped to manage, how the University of Pannonia Technology Transfer Company is structured as a cost centre rather than a revenue-generating entity, and what the KPI framework looks like when spinout capital attraction becomes a national policy indicator. Jarvas describes the process from the researcher's side: the prostate cancer diagnostic method that became the first spinout, 56 contract versions, the importance of consulting the venture capital perspective early, and what a structure that keeps every stakeholder motivated through multiple funding rounds actually requires. Karoly Szanto contextualises the University of Pannonia model within the European UVC landscape, where around 25% of research reaching the spinout phase attracts venture capital, and where the Netherlands and Denmark have recently moved to address ownership structure at the policy level. For UVC GPs, LPs evaluating spinout investability across the European UVC segment, university leadership teams, and anyone working on IP strategy or technology transfer policy, this conversation surfaces the structural decisions that determine whether external capital can enter a university spinout. 00:00 Introduction and topic 02:47 University KPIs and funding 07:47 IP and spinout metrics 11:08 Researcher entrepreneurial motivation 14:12 Why not university ownership 24:13 iPsy research and lessons learned 28:14 Royalty-based IP model 33:16 Investor perspective and trends 48:41 TTC and the university toolkit 01:02:59 International connections and capital network 01:10:04 Closing messages and goodbye Links: Karoly Szanto LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/] Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/ [https://www.karolyszanto.com/] University Venture Capital Coalition: https://univccoalition.org/ [https://univccoalition.org/] Guests: Chancellor Zsolt Csillag: https://www.linkedin.com/in/csillag-zsolt-a1649142/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/csillag-zsolt-a1649142/] Dr. Gábor Járvás: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabor-jarvas/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabor-jarvas/]

EP12 - Towards a Legible Asset Class: The Evolution of UVC

University venture capital, or UVC, is gaining visibility across global innovation ecosystems. More universities are launching funds, and more capital is entering the space. Yet performance remains uneven and difficult to evaluate from an institutional perspective. In this episode, Karoly Szanto explores why the core challenge is not a lack of activity, but a lack of coherence. He breaks down the structural factors that determine whether university spinouts attract venture capital, including IP alignment, equity structures, and market visibility. The conversation also addresses why UVC is still not fully legible as an asset class, and how fragmented data, inconsistent benchmarks, and limited comparability affect capital allocation decisions. Rather than proposing new solutions, this discussion focuses on what is already emerging. A more connected, structured layer that links existing knowledge, data, and actors into a system that can be understood and evaluated. From fragmented insights to accumulated knowledge. That is how UVC evolves into a category that institutional capital can engage with at scale. Timecode: 00:00 Why Universities Underperform 01:16 Fixing Spinout Funding Gaps 02:16 Value of University VC Funds 02:32 Why Launching Is Complex 04:00 Learning From a Community 05:23 Deep Tech Investing Talent 06:45 Missing Entrepreneur Operators 07:38 Venture Builders for Spinouts Links: Karoly Szanto LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/] Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/ [https://www.karolyszanto.com/] UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/ [https://uniprisma.com/] Guests: Thijmen Meijer: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/ [https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/]

EP 11- The Questions That Still Don’t Have Clear Answers In University Venture Capital

University Venture Capital is no longer experimental. Funds are being launched. Spinouts are increasing. Ecosystems are forming. But if you look closer, something is missing. Not activity. Structure. In this episode, we explore the questions that still don’t have clear answers in UVC: How should these funds actually be structured? What does performance mean in this context? How do IP, ownership, and governance work across institutions? And why is it still so difficult to compare opportunities from an LP perspective? The challenge is not a lack of effort. It is fragmentation. Knowledge exists. But it does not accumulate. This creates an uneven landscape in which strong institutions move forward while others rebuild from scratch. The real opportunity is not to standardize the system. It is to make it learn faster. Because in the end, the speed of evolution depends on the speed of learning. 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/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/] Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/ [https://www.karolyszanto.com/] UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/ [https://uniprisma.com/] Guests: Thijmen Meijer: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/ [https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/]