From The Lab To The Stock Market? An Analysis Of University-Oriented Seed Funds In Europe

This work investigates the role of university and PRO-oriented seed funds (i.e. USFs), namely VC funds with an explicit mission to make investments in academic spin-offs, as instruments to address the funding gap. We first offer an overview on USFs in Europe highlighting their heterogeneity and main characteristics. Second, we exploit an unique dataset of 1497 companies (including 733 USF-backed startups and other 764 startups backed by other VC funds) in order to analyze how USF-backed companies perform in terms of exit rates, staging and syndication levels with respect to non USF-backed companies. Empirical evidence suggests that USF-backed companies perform better in terms of staging and syndication, but worse in terms exit rates. Moreover, our analyses show that, within the group of USF-backed companies, the one that can attract more follow-on funding and investors are the ones financed by USFs which are internally managed by a university/PRO and that are linked to universities with high scientific rankings.