A Spin-Out founder story and the UK's Spin-Out review

It was a great honour to be invited to the advisory board of the spin-out review, thank you. Read about how the UK government wants to better support spin-outs as part of their Independent Review of Spin-Out Companies.

Unfortunately, I couldn't make it to London for the day of the announcement.

Fortunately, it doesn't matter because we now have Gen AI, so I just created this image of someone with glasses holding the spin-out review with a Science Creates t-shirt on standing outside Number 10.

Instead of sharing my recommendations made for the review, I thought I would share a timeline and some of our story as well as our actions, which gives more insight into the Why, What, and How.? From this it will be clear that we are just a bunch of dreamers and misfits determined to understand and change the world for the better.

I think recommendations come from experiences which are best shared through stories. Here's one from a spin-out founder.

2014: Spinning out Ziylo from the University of Bristol. Scientist to founder.

It's been 9 years of startups and spin-outs for me, which is lucky because I don’t think I was ever meant to do anything else. It must be in my DNA. The co-founder of Ziylo, Tom Smart , sent me Ziylo's first bank statement last week. It all started when we paid in a cheque for ￡5,000 posted from Ireland ( Keith MacDonald ). The first Ziylo invoice we paid was for legal advice for the licensing agreement…

Towards the end of my PhD with Professor Anthony Davis , we all started Ziylo to commercialise Glucose Binding Technology to help diabetics.

We faced many challenges - from navigating the licensing agreement, finding the right advice, and raising capital - but our biggest hurdle at the time was the lack of community & infrastructure, including no lab space.

2015: Science Creates founded. Yes, 3 years before Ziylo exits.

Against all advice, a year after founding Ziylo in 2015, we established Science Creates (formerly Unit DX) with a mission to build an ecosystem to support deep tech spin-outs like Ziylo.

This was driven because we couldn't find the right local ecosystem, any advice from local incubators was heavily skewed towards software entrepreneurship.

Where were the deep tech start ups and spin-outs? Where was our community?

Ziylo was the first spin-out from the 英国布里斯托大学 chemistry department in 7 years. (Ranked #1 in the UK for chemistry?research).

It became very clear after speaking with so many academics (Such as Timothy Gallagher & Jeremy Tavaré FRSB ) that the lab space barrier and lack of support had prevented many ideas from spinning out over the previous decade. This was now an obstacle we would have to overcome directly.

We needed space to scale up. Building to our requirements would have cost more than Ziylo was worth at the time. We needed more than coffee and wifi.

2016: Rejection, designing deep tech incubators, hard hats & raising capital

We got off to a rocky start: our grant bid for funding to address what we saw as a clear market failure – no lab space for deep tech spin-outs – was rejected. The reviewers thoughts are summarised here:

?"We believe there would be no demand. We do not think you have the financial capability or backing to run the project." Charming.

Building Science Creates St Phillips deep tech incubator, Ziylo raises ￡1 million

2017: Science Creates opens first deep tech incubator

12 months later, we opened Science Creates St Phillips (formerly Unit DX) a 15,000 sq ft space in Bristol and, importantly, deep tech lab space.

We opened it on time and within budget.

2018: Ziylo exit, founding Carbometrics, and my journey into investing

In 2018, because we built our own incubator, we were able to develop Ziylo’s technology much faster, leading to Ziylo’s acquisition by Novo Nordisk for up to $800m.

We spun out a spin-out from a spin-out - Carbometrics from Ziylo.

It's doing really well, just ask co-founder Andrew Chapman , the CEO (former CSO of Ziylo). But we are not really allowed to talk about it.

Oh, I also began angel investing. What was strange was that for some reason, every time I invested, everyone else thought it was a good idea, too? 12 months perviously not many VC and angels thought investing in Ziylo was a good idea.

2019 Science Creates Incubator full (previously Unit DX)

The first Science Creates Incubator was full. In those two years, 20 additional spinouts had emerged. We had supported over 37 deep tech companies.

It became more and more clear to me that deep tech companies need lots of money and specialist VC investors. Angels aren't enough. I was learning first hand that lifetime capital for most successful deep tech companies is high. Capital was increasingly becoming rate limiting.

2020: COVID: Founder to VC. Designing deep tech incubators, more hard hats, more raising capital. Now we are called Science Creates.

We started building the second incubator and founded SCVC (formerly Science Create Ventures)

2021: Science Creates opens second Incubator

We opened our second Incubator , giving us a total of 45,000 sq ft. SCVC closed its first fund.

2022: Science Creates Outreach & I step down as CEO

We opened The Learning Lab in the heart of our deep tech incubator with our charity Science Creates Outreach, aiming to support 4,000 school children a year and inspire them to become deep tech entrepreneurs.

Ashley Brewer is promoted to CEO of Science Creates incubators and I step down to focus more of my time on my position of Managing Partner at SCVC .

2023: Science Creates full, SCVC fund 2 & Science Creates Accelerator

SCVC hit the first close of its second fund with a target of $100 million.

We launched the Science Creates Accelerator , our first national accelerator programme with UKRI for Engineering Biology.

We are full and the ecosystem has now supported over 100 deep tech companies and counting, many of which are spin-outs from the 英国布里斯托大学 and other UK universities.

I spent far too much time playing with AI.

Exited Bristol AI founder (CTO and co-founder of Kudan ) and misfit John Williams joined SCVC .??

Science Creates Full, SCVC Fund 2 & Science Creates Accelerator

Chemistry world

Thank you for supporting spinouts.

I want to say a massive thank you from the Science Creates ecosystem. There are many wonderful, driven, and capable people in universities and government organisations who are passionate about helping UK spin-outs. Thank you for all your support and encouragement.

There's so much more we can all do to help realise the untapped potential of the research happening in universities across the country, and I’m pleased to see the review making some key recommendations that will help unlock this potential.

2024 will mark a decade. The fourth industrial revolution.

This is the starting line for so many of us in the ecosystem. We are all just getting? started and excited to see the enormous impact that will be generated over the next decade as we unlock the fourth industrial revolution.?

Side note: Gen AI is helpful for #dyslexic thinkers.

Here's another Gen AI image I made of how the 4th industrial revolution is unlocked:

UK Research and Innovation , Innovate UK , SCVC , Science Creates Outreach , Carbometrics , 英国布里斯托大学 , Science Creates , Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

Advisory board members of the UK Spin-Out Review

Professor Julia Black, Strategic Director of Innovation and Professor of Law at the

London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). President of the British

Academy.

Professor Dame Jessica Corner, Executive Chair of Research England

Martin Cox, Director of Business Development and Enterprise at Newcastle University

Dr Harry Destecroix , Founder of the Ziylo, Carbometrics the Science Creates Ecosystem and Managing Partner of SCVC

Dr Barbara Domayne-Hayman , KQ Labs Chair and Entrepreneur in Residence at the Crick Institute

Christopher Hopkins , Managing Director of Venture Capital at Legal and General

Dr Karin Immergluck , Associate Vice Provost, Office of Technology Licensing at Stanford University

Duncan Johnson , CEO at Northern Gritstone

Ale Maiano Ale Maiano, CEO at Wilbe

Adrian Toutoungi & Ross McNaughton , Taylor Wessing

Dr Jason Mellad , CEO and Co-Founder of Start Codon

Lesley Millar-Nicholson , Executive Director of MIT Technology Licensing Office (TLO)

Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli , Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Glasgow

Lord David Willetts, President of the Resolution Foundation. Former Universities and Science minister.