Venture Skipper by Karoly Szanto

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

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/

UniVCC : https://univccoalition.org/

Guest: 

Christophe Haunold: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christophe-haunold/

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/

Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/

University Venture Capital Coalition: https://univccoalition.org/

Guests:

Chancellor Zsolt Csillag: https://www.linkedin.com/in/csillag-zsolt-a1649142/

Dr. Gábor Járvás: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabor-jarvas/

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/

Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/

UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Guests:

Thijmen Meijer: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/

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/

Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/

UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Guests:

Thijmen Meijer: https://www.thijmenmeijer.com/

In this conversation with Thijmen Meijer, we unpack a key challenge in university venture capital.

Why is it still difficult to attract LP capital, despite strong research and innovation coming from universities?

We go into:

Why are fragmented fundraising limits a scale

What LPs actually look for when allocating capital

How coordinated efforts between universities could change the game

Why structure and trust matter more than hype

This is not about building one big fund.

It’s about building a system that works for investors, universities, and founders.

If you are part of the venture ecosystem, this conversation is worth reflecting on.

Timecode:

00:00 M2.3 The missed opportunity in fundraising for venture capital funds

00:00 M2.3 Addressing Fundraising Challenges

02:17 (Q to Karoly) Event Planning and Execution

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/

In this episode of Venture Skipper, Karoly Szanto and Thijmen Meijer discuss the structural challenges around university venture capital and why the ecosystem remains fragmented.

This conversation explores a new initiative to build a coalition around university venture capital.

The goal is to gather structured data, connect practitioners, and create a platform where universities and investors can share knowledge, benchmark performance, and collaborate on venture creation.

This episode is an open invitation to universities, venture capital funds, tech transfer offices, and investors who believe that collaboration can unlock the full potential of academic innovation.

If you want to understand how venture ecosystems are built, this conversation is a good place to start.

Timecode:

00:00 (Karoly) Introduction to University Venture Capital (Karoly)

00:22 Building a Unified Community

01:34 Research and Data Gathering

03:23 (Q to Karoly)Creating a Collaborative Platform

06:13 (Q to Thijmen)Operational Plans and Membership

07:17 Karoly rephrases

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/

Universities generate extraordinary innovation.

Yet most university spinouts struggle to reach venture scale.

In this conversation, Karoly Szanto explores a problem inside the global innovation ecosystem.

Thousands of universities operate technology transfer offices, but only a small fraction run venture capital funds. Even fewer share structured data or best practices.

The result is fragmentation. Strong institutions succeed, but many others attempt to build venture structures without guidance.

Karoly explains the cultural gap between academia and venture capital, why equity and royalty structures often discourage investors, and how a shared ecosystem could unlock far greater impact from university research.

This discussion looks beyond individual startups and focuses on the system around them.

Because sometimes the real opportunity is not the next company. It is fixing the infrastructure that allows innovation to scale

Timecode:

00:00 Origin Story

00:52 Outreach Findings

01:58 TTO vs University VC

02:49 Need for Platform

04:03 Venture Studio Model

05:07 Ecosystem Upside

06:34 Europe Stats Gap

08:38 Culture Clash

11:04 Bad Deal Terms

11:33 Market Friendly Fix

14:55 Closing Thoughts

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/

In this episode, I speak with Peter M. Kovacs and Thijmen Meijer about co-investors in early-stage MedTech and BioTech.

We cut through labels and focus on what actually matters: skin in the game, trust, and execution.

What we cover:

1. Why investor type matters less than incentives, capability, and character

2. Two co-investor profiles that create the strongest execution synergies

3. Peter’s view on family offices: values first, personal trust, relationship over transaction

4. Thijmen’s reality check: introductions beat cold outreach

5. Why focused micro funds and emerging managers can outperform fee-driven models

6. What real de-risking looks like when you are building under pressure

If you are a founder, LP, family office, or emerging manager looking for clarity over hype, this conversation is for you.

Timecode:

00:00 Introduction to Key Stakeholders

00:22 Types of Co-Investors

01:09 Value Proposition and Commitment

02:10 Investor Specialization and Synergies

03:26 Role of Angel Investors

04:02 Corporate Venture Capital

04:44 Family Offices and Personal Touch

08:56 Challenges in Different Regions

09:32 Building Relationships with Investors

10:34 High Net Worth Individuals

18:02 Micro Funds and Emerging Managers

19:51 Conclusion and Future Outlook

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/

Peter M. Kovacs Personal Website:https://www.petermkovacs.com/

In this episode, I break down what investors often miss when they fund science without systems in place. Great science is not enough. A venture needs an operating rhythm, communication discipline, vendor control, and accountability that holds under pressure.

We talk about:

• Why science ventures fail even when the tech is real

• The four systems that de-risk execution

• How to evaluate a team beyond charisma and slide decks

• Why operating systems are a fairer way to back underdogs, including female founders in femtech

• Practical questions investors can ask to spot execution strength early
  If you invest in deep tech, medtech, or university spinouts, this is for you. Less noise. More clarity.

Timecode:

00:00 Introduction and Welcome

00:21 Achievements and Progress

01:38 Lessons for Startup Founders

02:56 Building a Strong Global Team

04:44 Handling Underperformance

09:36 Future Challenges and Milestones

13:28 Fundraising Challenges for FemTech

27:36 The Importance of Value-Driven Partnerships

31:29 Conclusion and Gratitude

Links:

Karoly Szanto LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolyszanto1/

Karoly Szanto Personal Website: https://www.karolyszanto.com/

UniPrisma: https://uniprisma.com/

Guests:

Roswitha Verwer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roswitha-verwer-b2b636137/

Peter M. Kovacs Personal Website:https://www.petermkovacs.com/