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/