SetSquared takes over the Shard

Academic spin-outs and student startups competed for investment at the Shard in London in front of a live audience made up of private investors, venture capitalists and angel investors at an event hosted by SetSquared.

The incubator partnership of the UK universities of Bristol, Bath, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey brought companies from across its five campuses for the event, which attracted an audience of 250, many of whom came from UK-based early-stage investors such as Mercia Fund Management and Eden Ventures and represented a collective £30m ($47m) of potential investment.

Among those pitching was Ultrahaptics, a spin-out of Bristol University. The company, which recently raised $940,000 from commercialisation firm IP Group, had the opportunity to demonstrate its technology live on stage. Ultrahaptics is developing a system involving ultrasound that allows the user to interface with other technologies through hand signals. The ultrasound provides feedback the user can feel, providing the sensation of a barrier of sound that can be manipulated. The team can see multiple uses for the technology, including automotive industries, gaming, med-tech and consumer goods.

The Ultrahaptics team were joined on stage by many of their startup peers. One particularly notable startup, TickBox, came up from Exeter University for the event. The startup, led by 20 year-old Matt Morley who is taking a year out from his studies to get the company off the ground, is looking to overhaul how voters interact with elections by providing simple questions to gauge a voter’s political stance and then match them to the political candidate in their area most in line with their views.

The event also gave SetSquared the opportunity to announce the launch of iCure, a pilot project backed by UK government bodies Innovate UK and the Higher Education Funding Council for England. The project seeks to assist early-stage university companies in crossing the funding “valley of death” between inception and follow-on funding, and will provide £3.2m to SetSquared. The incubator plans to use the cash to provide training, mentoring and funding to tech transfer programmes and early-stage companies linked to its five partner universities.

SetSquared, which has helped raise £60m over the past 12 months for its companies, also announced a new partnership with academic health science networks in the south of England which looks to assist patients both inside and outside the UK’s National Health Service.

Simon Bond, innovation director at SetSquared, said: “There were some incredibly strong pitches, and while investment does take time we have already seen some promising conversations taking place between SetSquared startups and investors. We are looking forward to these developing over the coming months and hope to report even more success stories from our programme.”