Universities need investors to bridge the start-up funding gap
Alice Gast, President of Imperial College London, writes to the FT calling for a focus on the funding gap identified by New Atlantis Ventures:
Universities like Imperial transfer discoveries for the benefit of society. Maximising the number of investor-led spinouts is not the most effective way to do this; it must be combined with partnerships with established companies and SMEs, so that ideas are put to work faster and further, scaling to a global reach, as we have seen recently with vaccines. We need a laser focus on funding gaps. One that gets less attention is the proof of concept pre-start-up stage, especially for deep technologies. Far-sighted investors would be wise to explore how they can help academic researchers bridge this gap. Not all universities will need a “nudge” to create supportive innovation ecosystems. Some governments and investors could do with one.
https://www.ft.com/content/c7964ba0-7beb-4fbc-9a05-babb218945e3
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