Bám, another investment round for a Dutch deep tech startup. Photonics company Effect Photonics raised 35 million euros from major investors in March, bringing the total to more than 110 million. Money well spent: photonics is super hot, the Netherlands is at the forefront and Effect Photonics’ laser technology can forever change the way the world manufactures chips.
Also read: Are photonic chips the new gold for the Netherlands?
And to think that the spin-out of TU Eindhoven would never have gotten off the ground. The founders had to negotiate the terms for their spin-out for so long that at a certain point they thought: never mind. Good thing they slept on it another night.
Knowledge valorization
Effect Photonics is not the only successful spin-out that emerged from the technical universities of the Netherlands. And in contrast to his somewhat difficult start, there are many more stories of entrepreneurs who work well with ‘their’ university – whether or not as a shareholder.
Make Holland Great Again
This is an article under the flag Make Holland Great Again: how can we get our ecosystem of startups and scaleups to flourish? About what is going well, what could be improved and who will arrange it. Read more articles from this series »
The academic world is also aware of this, because it is part of the threefold task that we give to knowledge institutions: conducting research, providing education and knowledge valorization: ‘knowledge transfer for the benefit of society’. The latter stands for the use of scientific knowledge in practice, for example in a medicine or technological solution. In short: by turning it into a business.
And that happens a lot. According to Techleap’s latest State of Dutch Tech report, approximately 1,200 deep tech startups have been set up in this way by researchers and university students since 1990. Because the universities contributed knowledge, the so-called Knowledge Transfer Offices (KTOs) were involved in the establishment. In exchange for that knowledge, usually a patent, the universities received an interest in the startup. In 500 cases, the spin-out concluded a licensing agreement with the union.
Impressive figures, with two caveats, as the report shows: the startups that started research often remain small and only a small minority manage to make an exit within fifteen years. That is a broader problem among Dutch tech startups with many causes.
But what is especially striking: the enormous potential of knowledge that remains unused ‘on the shelf’. If we zoom in on the technical universities: over the past twenty years, more than 1,500 filed patents have led to 139 spin-offs. In other words: nine out of ten patents did not (yet) lead to business, according to the Techleap report. So they remain on the shelf.
And there lies enormous potential, whether you want to focus on the competitiveness of the Netherlands, solutions for a more sustainable future or getting the deep-tech startup ecosystem to flourish. How do we get more knowledge off the shelf, how do we create more academic startups?
Worlds with different DNA
MT/Sprout took a tour of the key players in deep tech. Past the tech entrepreneurs who have experience in setting up an academic spin-out. Past the people who work at the KTOs and elsewhere at the technical universities to turn knowledge into business, the deep tech investors who provide the startups with financial fuel, the experts and advisors with knowledge of academic startups.
What sticks: everyone wants as many successful startups as possible. Because their success is also the success of the university, which demonstrates that society benefits from the knowledge acquired. But when an academic spin-off is created, two worlds with different DNA come together: that of science and that of (start-up) entrepreneurs.
Sometimes this creates distance or even misunderstanding. But at other times those worlds are identified in the same person, when a student or researcher starts that startup himself. And sometimes it just collides really hard.
In a series of articles we show how and why things sometimes go wrong. But also what steps have been taken to give the marriage between science and startup entrepreneurship a greater chance of success. And: what still needs to change to realize the potential of the treasure trove of deep tech that still awaits within Dutch knowledge institutes.
Read the first article:
Academic spin-outs do not get their IP for free: ‘It turned out to be a mistake on our side’
