To date, 49 universities in the UK have adopted a recommendation to take between 10% and 25% equity in their life science spinouts. The recommendation was inspired by the USIT Guide, published last year by tech transfer group TenU, making it the guide’s arguably biggest impact yet.

But it’s just the start. The University of Southampton has used the USIT Guide to develop a Deal Readiness Toolkit. It’s an effort to standardise and harmonise spinout deal negotiations, with templates, checklists, and advice on process improvement, says Diana Galpin, director of enterprise and knowledge exchange at the institution.

Ross McNaughton, a partner at law firm Taylor Wessing, welcomes the approach and says he’s keen to see a UK version of US-BOLT, a template term sheet for life science spinouts developed by a group of universities, VC firms and law firms in 2020.

For Michelle Barbour, associate vice-chancellor for enterprise and innovation at the University of Bristol, the USIT Guide and the discussion about equity stakes has been an opportunity to educate professors for whom a spinout had previously never been on the cards but who were now interested to learn more.

And Owen Metters, an investment manager focused on deep tech at Octopus Ventures, argues universities should use their newly found confidence in negotiations to follow venture capital’s power law and spin out more companies more quickly — acknowledging that most will fail but the winners will deliver outsized returns.

Diarmuid O’Brien, the pro-vice-chancellor for innovation at the University of Cambridge, leads the panel discussion, recorded at the TenU summit at the Tate Modern in London last month.

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