You have show you have the right team, the right technology, and a credible plan for achieving a major exit in a realistic timeframe. Too often, academics describe their technology, but don’t present a business plan that tells an investor how this is going to make them that return.
What barriers do researchers face when trying to access the specialist capital needed for a spinout?
In the UK, we’ve done a great job of improving access to generalist capital – regional funds, angel funds, and similar initiatives. But spinouts, particularly deep‑tech and life‑science ones like those in oncology, need specialist investors with long-term horizons.
A common situation I hear about is a spinout with three angel investors lined up who all say: “We’ll join the round once you secure a specialist lead”. And finding that specialist lead – whether a domain experienced angel or a specialist VC – is often the key to unlocking the whole round. The problem is we simply don’t have enough of those specialist investors to match the number of spinouts emerging.
At Cancer Research Horizons, we’re trying to help by acting as a specialist oncology seed investor to unlock those early rounds.
The report shows that access to specialist life‑science investors is heavily concentrated in a few regions. How can cancer researchers working outside major clusters gain visibility and attract the right investors early enough?
If you’re outside an investment cluster, you can’t just wait for investors to come to you, you have to take your company to them.
One mistake I often see is universities teaming up regionally but presenting companies from every sector under the sun in a single showcase – climate tech, fusion, engineering, life sciences, software. The issue is that investors don’t hunt like that. Sector‑specific investors don’t want to sit through nine unrelated pitches, so they simply stop attending.
Instead, regions need to group companies by sector, not geography. It’s also a good idea to build long term relationships with relevant investors – bring them onto panels, involve them in early-stage proof-of-concept funding, and get to know them. Investors are overwhelmed with AI generated business plans – when I was researching the report, I kept hearing that they want to return to the more relationship driven approach of the past.
