How to build a spinout culture

By Marc Ambasna Jones 19 Aug 26 Reading time: 6 mins

“In the last UK budget, one of the papers produced was a guide to entrepreneurship,” says Marty Reid, director of innovation at the University of Bristol. “A handbook for entrepreneurship and page one, chapter one, mentioned university spinouts in the context of all entrepreneurship. Now, five years ago, I think spinouts would have been a niche thing.”

Times have changed for Reid both professionally and in terms of the perception and opportunity for UK spinouts. He is talking from a room in the centre of Bristol, eagerly awaiting the completion of the University’s Temple Quarter Enterprise Campus, home to the new Bristol Innovations Zone, designed to give spinouts and start-ups the support they need to grow.

There has never been such a good time to be in university research and innovation, says Reid, who, after three and half years working as executive director of the SETsquared Partnership, knows a thing or two about building the conditions for spinouts to thrive. A former Rolls Royce employee, he has worked in industry, which also gives a clue as to where he wants to create stronger relationships.

That experience on the corporate side of the table informs an argument he makes about how universities have traditionally engaged with industry. The default model, contract-led and transactional, misses the point, he says.

“The relationship between an industrial company and a university isn’t a one-to-one,” says Reid. “It’s usually groups of researchers or commercial people with groups of researchers and commercial people. I wonder whether we can connect them in a slightly different way, to help them share experience and learn and grow, rather than just starting off with ‘they’ve got to buy this R&D’.”

From SETsquared, Reid took something different, a cultural lesson about what founder support should actually feel like. Fast, commercially minded, built around what investors and entrepreneurs need rather than what institutions find convenient.

“SETsquared is a university partnership, but in the market really feels like an independent brand,” he says. “It has been designed with start-ups in mind, with investors in mind, over a really long period of time. The cultural approach, the comms, the messaging, it’s much more B2B. That experience is something we could do more of in the university.”

The funding gap

Bristol is performing better than most people outside the region appreciate. It is a region now ranked highest for spinout creation outside of the “Golden Triangle”. On venture capital attracted per capita, Bristol sits behind only London, Oxford, and Cambridge, outperforming Manchester and Edinburgh.

“Pound for pound, there is more venture capital money going into science and deep tech in Bristol than any city of comparable size,” Reid says.

But the numbers tell only part of the story. The well publicised UK scale-up finance problem is, says Reid, close to being addressed. Government has pushed capital through the British Business Bank. Pension fund money is beginning to move. But what is not being fixed is the other end. The proof-of-concept stage. The pre-growth valley where a deep tech company needs serious capital before it has anything a conventional venture capitalist can easily price.

“We need to be clear about where we have distinctive strengths”

Marty Reid

“A lot of our venture capital system was set up for software historically,” says Reid. “A biotech company, a semiconductor company, need larger amounts of money early, which is a harder bet to place if you’re in venture capital. That funding at proof-of-concept or pre-growth stage is where we and peer institutions are seeing a real gap at the moment.”

The pipeline of quality companies is growing faster than the funding available to support them, a direct consequence of years of investment in entrepreneurial culture and accelerator infrastructure now bearing fruit. Bristol Innovations is working with SETsquared and regional venture capital firm QantX on a partnered investment fund drawing on the combined pipeline of six SETsquared universities. Northern Gritstone, which raised £300 million for the northern university cluster, provides the clearest precedent.

“The organisations that treat investor links as little black books and hoard them just tend to be capped in terms of their scale. We trust that the quality and strength of our companies coming through will stand out, even if we act in a way that supports investors to see other things too.”

Where Bristol is strong

Reid is precise about what Bristol can and cannot claim. Quantum is an area of concrete strength, not across all of quantum research, but in quantum computing and company creation. Bristol’s programmes have drawn researchers from across Europe and produced a track record of commercialisation that is hard to argue with.

Applied AI is more nuanced. Bristol is not the place for foundational large language model research. But in the application of AI to real industries – human factors, adoption, diffusion into business – there is depth of talent that is commercially useful in a more immediate way. The new Temple Quarter campus, co-located with two AI centres for doctoral training in applied research, reinforces that focus.

Life sciences is another area of genuine strength. Underpinning all of it is Isambard AI, the UK’s most powerful AI supercomputer, hosted by the University. It is now producing a range of impressive results, from diagnosing dementia from a blood test to seeing inside cells to treat heart disease. 

“We need to be clear about where we have distinctive strengths,” says Reid. “We need to be able to stand behind it.”

The Bristol Innovations Zone is the physical expression of what Reid is trying to build – a university re-anchoring its enterprise activity in a more accessible location, alongside national research centres in telecoms and AI, and closer to the kind of industrial R&D leaders who currently engage with universities mostly through procurement.

“I think the Bristol Innovations Zone should be a hub for taking on those big challenges together in a flexible way, perhaps in a way that we don’t do today very well as institutions. And if we get that right in the middle, it will, almost by osmosis, support the creation of new companies, support the creation of new research.”

The data on spinouts, the government commitment, the investment pipeline – all of it counts for little without the cultural shift to back it up. That is the thread running through Reid’s career, from Rolls Royce to SETsquared to Bristol Innovations. And it is, he believes, the thing that will determine whether the UK’s renewed ambition for university spinouts actually delivers.

“There’s been a big cultural shift in researchers here. We’ve seen a lot more look to set up companies than they ever have done before. Now we’ve got the nice problem of needing to service them.”

Note: Bristol Innovations is the commercial and enterprise arm of the University of Bristol. The SETsquared Partnership spans six UK universities: Bristol, Bath, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton, and Surrey. The QantX Squared investment fund is currently in fundraising.

Marc Ambasna Jones / Editor

Working as a technology journalist and writer since 1989, Marc has written for a wide range of titles on technology, business, education, politics and sustainability, with work appearing in The Guardian, The Register, New Statesman, Computer Weekly and many more.