Universities set the pace in tech transfer

Variety is arguably a fundamental ideology driving innovation, so it should come as no surprise that the Global University Venturing global survey of the top universities’ technology transfer offices (TTOs) demonstrated a plethora of approaches on how to turn research into commercial success.

When we launched Global University Venturing, one of our key mission objectives was to shine a light on this variety. Through our sister publication Global Corporate Venturing, we had much feedback from subscribers who wanted insight into universities and the tech transfer process, but found it a near-secretive sector. This survey – see table here – is our first attempt to take the lid off tech transfer and open the door to more fluid conversations between the guardians of university intellectual property (IP) and the investors and companies looking to utilise the vast libraries of technology held by TTOs.

The guiding thought here is not to create a league table of TTO activity as such. If that were the case, universities such as Queen’s University Belfast (QUB), which ranks highly in terms of licensing revenues in the UK, would certainly appear here. Instead, our focus was to survey the world’s top 150 universities by cross-correlating the three main university research rankings – Academic Ranking of World Universities, QS World University Rankings 2011/12, Times Higher Education – to ascertain just how they go about tech transfer. Equity was one of the focal points of this survey. We wanted to know whether universities took equity in their spin-outs and, if so, how much? The answers we received reflected this diversity, with some, such as Japan, effectively banning universities from taking stakes, while others taking 50% of any start-up from the institution. By and large, most TTOs look to take a stake in their spin-outs initially, but how much of a stake and for how long demonstrated an array of differing strategies.

Most TTOs take an initial 50:50 split on equity with the inventors in a spin-out with the aim of diluting that stake as other backers come into the picture. How far a university seeks to dilute its stake and whether it sells feeds a running debate in the sector.

The crux of this argument centres on the issue of universities sitting on the board of a spin-out. Universities tend to be methodically bureaucratic in the decisions they make. From my personal experience of working in a university, even the simplest decision can and will endure a comprehensive sign-off process in which everyone with even the slightest vested interest will be consulted. This rubber-stamp culture lends itself well to the systematic nature of scientific research, where rigorous testing and trials are the only way to be sure of the accuracy of a study.

However, the slow-but-steady approach is not conducive to the more fluid world of business, where strong leadership and vision often trumps the opinions of the majority.

So a university lacking a sense of entrepreneurial urgency is a weakness when it comes to having a say in the running of a company. Similar to appointing a life-long academic to a chief executive post instead of a chief scientific officer position in a spinoff, the university mindset becomes cumbersome when decisions require clear business thinking.

Many universities recognise this. For example, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will often take a small equity percentage in a spinout. However, MIT is positively allergic to any form of management control in a spin-out, and actively seeks to avoid control while maintaining a small stake to represent MIT’s contribution. But this is not the same across the board – several universities will continue to maintain stakes and board positions. A small stake in a wildly successful company will often turn out to be a wiser investment than a large stake in a small company strangled by red tape.

Another area that elicited a range of responses was the question of funding new enterprises. Most TTOs maintain a proof-of-concept fund to help research cross the “valley of death” funding gap into the demonstration stage. However, most would opt for this to come in the form of grants as opposed to actual investments to avoid complications with those that fail to make it.

It gets interesting when research has reached the stage where it is ready to be spun out. As Richard Jennings, deputy director at Cambridge Enterprise, indicated in a recent talk at TTO training organisation PraxisUnico’s annual conference in the UK, traditional venture capital (VC) is not what it once was. Timeframes attached to investments can drive a spin-out towards exit while the company itself is only half-baked. In addition, insufficient backing and the perceived laziness of VCs – at least in the UK – have led many to question whether this is the correct avenue to pursue in the unpredictable world of research commercialisation.

Jennings suggested that angel and corporate investors were crucial to the future of spin-out funding, demonstrating the benefits of a higher degree of flexibility. Hyde Park

Angels in the US mid-west and Germany-based media conglomerate Bertelsmann’s backing of the $100m University Ventures fund support Jennings’ view.

Often, the state exerts pressure to encourage greater collaboration between academia and local corporations (see box on Saudi Arabia) . In Asia, for example, the Nanyang Innovation and Enterprise Office, National Taiwan University’s Technology licensing office, seeks to help scientific innovations translate to the marketplace while fostering better industry ties.

Cambridge Enterprise (CE) is an example of another avenue open to institutions – the university-owned venture fund. CE currently has around £5m ($7.85m) available to invest in this manner, and in recent months began fundraising for its $2.2m Enterprise Fund II.

A similar pattern appears to be gaining purchase in other universities in developed economies, with more and more turning to this internal venturing pattern, although still behind China’s and other high-growth economies’ lead (see box on Asia’s success stories) . Colorado State University (CSU) created a $1.5m venture fund last month, and the University of Illinois at Chicago launched the Chancellor’s Innovation Fund the month before, where half of the $10m purse will be used for seed investments.

It is an approach that seems to be catching on, encouraged by the range of networks among TTOs, whether ASTP-Proton in Europe, the Russian Technology Transfer Network], an association of 52 innovation centres in the country, or the Association of University Technology Managers] and National Council of Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer (NCET2) in the US.

While conducting the survey, Global University Venturing asked whether TTOs had a venture fund under management. Some like CSU, CE and Chicago clearly did, others were quiet on the venture front. However, many reported to be planning the launch of a fund in the next couple of years in an apparent reaction to Jennings and others’ concerns over VC funding.

One fund in particular that has recently garnered attention is the University of Minnesota’s $70m venture fund.

The fund will not only invest $20m in the university’s spinouts, but has raised an extra $50m to invest in spin-outs and start-ups across the US.

The size and scale of Minnesota’s fund echoes that of collaborative funds that have appeared recently. In the US, a consortium of leading universities, including California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the majority of the University of California system, and Pennsylvania State University, have collaborated to back the Osage University Partners Fund I. Managed externally by Osage Venture Partners, the fund will invest $100m in early-stage spinouts across the country.

In the U
K, several universities tied to UK-listed commercialization firm IP Group will benefit from the creation of a £30m ($47m) fund. IP Venture Fund II will invest in spinouts from the firm’s 12 university partnerships. As TTOs remain indecisive on how to encourage funding, a similar story was told in our licence revenue split. In our survey, we have reported the share an inventor, or inventors, would take from revenues generated from the licensing of their IP. In many cases, this works out as a straight third – a third goes to the university and the remainder to the inventor’s lab and faculty. But as demonstrated, this scale differs from institution to institution and is creating a potentially large shadow culture of start-ups beyond the TTOs’ purview (see box below) . In some cases, such as Sweden, South Korea and Singapore, the inventor takes a much bigger share. In Sweden and South Korea, legislation is in place to ensure the academic takes a significant portion of revenue generated, such as Sweden’s Professor’s Privilege law. In other universities, what inventors can gain from licensing their research falls well below average. One debate that took place at UK-based PraxisUnico’s conference revolved around low academic engagement with TTOs. While there are plenty of ways to address this issue, at the forefront must be thinking through what is in it for the professor. If universities are constrictive on what academics can make by licensing their research, then it hardly makes for an enticing offer for them. A university must offer appropriate entrepreneurial incentives. Another topic of discussion arising from the survey is the structure of TTOs. There seem to be three options – internal, wholly-owned subsidiary or outsourcing. Internal seems to be the dominant modus operandi, but

it is questionable whether this is the most effective route.

In the case of the UK, the two most successful tech clusters involve Oxford and Cambridge. Oxford licenses its IP through Isis Innovation, a wholly-owned subsidiary. Cambridge takes the same approach with Cambridge Enterprise, which interestingly started its life as a university art dealer selling bronze busts, some of which remain on the company’s balance sheet.

CE is the stand-out tech cluster in Europe, and it is arguably this ability to exist separate from university politics, alongside Cambridge’s brand and research focus, that

allows it operate so effectively. However, snapping at its heels is Imperial Innovations, the TTO of Imperial College London (ICL). If we take external investment raised as a metric, CE reports more than a £1bn raised by its spin-outs over its 18-year history. An impressive figure, but Imperial Innovations has managed £430m since 2006, which would seem to indicate greater success in this area, and would put it well ahead if its spinouts had maintained the same pace over the same time period.

Imperial Innovations’ approach is different from most TTOs in that it is largely more commercially focused, has greater resources, and ICL maintains only a 30.3% stake in the company. It has raised £206m to invest in its spinouts, and has the freedom to work with Oxford, Cambridge and University College London on their spin-outs while maintaining larger stakes in spin-outs without the fear of bureaucracy.

From this viewpoint, it would seem universities that treat their TTOs as businesses and give them the resources to succeed and the freedom to attract entrepreneurial academics enjoy the strongest success and the highest revenues.

While innovation may be driven by variety, it is pushed forward further still by analysis of what works best. If this were not true, cyclists would still use penny-farthings, houses would still be constructed from mud, and computers would have all the portability of a derailed freight train. We hope that this survey, while a work in progress as Global University Venturing grows, helps to shine that aforementioned light on the sector, and we welcome any feedback that will assist us in becoming a more definitive source of information in the future.

Box: Observations from the author, by Gregg Bayes-Brown

The survey also gave us a chance to take a look at how TTOs represent themselves online and in communications, and as with the rest of the survey, there were huge variations.

Online presence both provided avenues for praise and grave concern. In an increasingly networked world, maintaining a robust online presence is key to any business.

This becomes even more important for a business enterprise seeking new investors to snap up a licence or back a spin-out.

Websites should be easy to find, should be both attractive and user-friendly in terms of design, and should provide effective communication of news on the site, through RSS (rich site summary), and harness social media. If a simple Google search for a university’s name and “tech transfer” does not result in a hit for the TTO, this is an outand- out failure of web design. Similarly, if an academic or investor cannot effectively navigate a page to find information they require – portfolio firms, licensing opportunities,

IP policy and so on – TTOs cannot expect seamless engagement with the communities they are paid to reach.

In some cases, this is done perfectly. The University of Adelaide and Ohio State University stan out as shining examples of how to manage web presence. However, this was not the case across the board. Often, we found TTOs with little presence, with the little information available consigned to a dusty page of early 2000s design hidden in some dark corner of a university website’s research section.

In a couple of inexcusable cases, we found a TTO that had been out of commission for a decade yet still hosting the old pages, making identification of the current TTO difficult. In another, we found an IP policy written in the Comic Sans font .

If a TTO expects to attract attention through the web, a small but crucial investment in web design comes highly recommended.

There are also plenty of TTOs that would benefit from seconding a team member to their university’s communications department. As alluded to in this feature, university mindsets differ greatly from businesses, and the same applies to the relationship between universities and media.

Formerly a university media relations officer, I understand the different speeds at which both universities and the media operate, and for effective communication between the two, it is essential that someone in a TTO or affiliated communications unit also respects this. Slow or a lack of communication here demonstrates a poor comprehension for how the media operates, and it is in this breakdown that opportunities are missed.

Media offers TTOs and their wider institutions the ability to demonstrate to the world what they do. In today’s globalized economy, inability to capitalise on media will not

only put a TTO on the backburner compared with peers, but will also close opportunities to complete its mission of commercialising its technology for the greater good as potential investors pass them by unnoticed.

Box: Reflections on the shadow start-ups

John Spindler, chief executive of Capital Enterprise, an umbrella body for public and not-for-profit organisations hat support entrepreneurs and small businesses in London, UK.

Eight universities in the UK are responsible for 75% of all the formal 167 spin-outs, including Oxford, Cambridge, University College London (UCL), Edinburgh, Imperial College and Manchester. But given this 167 is only about one per university nationally and they receive licensing revenues of about £33m ($50m) a year, this is tiny given the amount of funding going into research.

The mid-ranks of universities are being increasingly squeezed to decide between being re
search or teachingled institutions.

At Capital Enterprise we work with 18 university members but only one via the technology transfer office – Queen Mary’s – as the rest I deal with the enterprise team, student-run clubs and incubators. For example, UCL has

an incubator, UCL Advance for student entrepreneurs where the tech transfer office (TTO) has no stake in the intellectual property (IP) being created, and UCLB, where the university co-owns the IP. The general rule for a university with an interest in the IP is they will try to license it first, second and then think of a spin-out third, especially as most academics are not very entrepreneurial.

If the university does not own the IP, or in areas where it

 is not important, such as software, which is hard to patent in the UK, then the entrepreneurial student or professor does not go to the TTO, as they think: “Why should we

 give away 50%?” So, the shadow system is five or six times larger than the official spin-out figures, mainly students, and that is excluding, say, the arts graduates who go freelance after leaving university.

So some universities are trying to get buy-in from these entrepreneurs by offering to take 10% to 15% in return for help with proof-of-concept (PoC) grants or access to their network.

What is changing in the UK next year is that universities need to show they are working with small and medium-sized enterprises in order to get more funding from the European Union as part of its Horizon 2020 innovation plan.

The UK currently offers plenty of PoC – UCL has a budget of £8m to £10m per year for example – for translation of university research projects into commercial trials and results. But academics game the system by using the PoC money to research their next grant bid.

Box: Asia success story, by James Mawson

To see the true potential of the role of universities in supporting entrepreneurs you have to turn to China.

According to Atsushi Sunami, a Fellow at the Research Institute of Economy Trade & Industry, in an article in 2002: “China has a long history of university-affiliated enterprises – xiaoban enterprises – dating back to the “qingong jianxue” philosophy in the 1950s that called for studying while working. Then, in the 1980s, following the government’s launch of reform policy, a number of university-affiliated enterprises began to sprout. Facing dire fiscal straits, universities wanted to pull themselves away from budgetary difficulties and improve the poor living conditions of professors and university staff by commercializing research and development achievements.”

US entrepreneur and author Steve Blank, in a series of blog posts after visiting China, summed up how interconnected the state, universities and entrepreneurialism can be.

His third post on the topic said: “China’s move away from a state system that solely depended on a command and control economy started in the 1990s. The first wave of start-ups began when research and development centres and universities began to provide the technology and seed capital for new start-ups that were spin-outs or spinoffs.

This could be a group of individuals leaving a university or research centre or an entire department leaving.

“For example, in the 1990s 85% of the start-up funds of the new technology companies founded in Beijing came from the research centre or university they left … The founding of domestic venture capital firms (VCs) began with the establishment of local government-financed VCs, followed by university-backed VCs.”

By 2000, 364 universities – primarily from six state tech transfer centres in universities dominated by Peking and Tsinghua around the capital, Beijing – operated 2,097 high-tech enterprises to earn three-quarters of their total revenues, employing 230,000 employees and with a further 780,000 students engaged in research activities in those enterprises, Sunami said. In their book, Two Dragon Heads: Contrasting Development Paths for Beijing and Shanghai, Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima said China had 42,945 spin-offs from Chinese universities between 1997 to 2004, many of which were for former university staff.

Beijing’s universities had RMB16.3bn and RMB14.5bn in revenues by 2003, respectively from affiliated firms, such as from spin-outs, including Founder from Peking and Tongfang from Tsinghua.

Tsinghua Holding was set up in 1995 to manage spinoffs and has more than 80 portfolio companies, with major share holding positions in seven public companies, including Tongfang Nuctech Container Inspection System, solar energy heating pipes and water heaters, Tongfang computers, the Unisplendour notebook computer, Capital biochip and Yuanxing generic medicines.

Tsinghua Holding has appointed Tsing Capital as its clean-tech venture capital unit, and the university also has a science park – with 300 firms by 2007 – and Tsinghua Business incubator. The Chinese Academy of Sciences, also in the country’s capital, spun out computer group Lenovo and 400 others with investment by 2004 and also has a science and technology development centre in partnership with the Beijing municipal government.

Further south, Shanghai’s two main universities, SJTU and Fudan, had licensing revenues in 2003 of RMB224.5m and RMB73.3m respectively, according to Shahid Yusuf and Kaoru Nabeshima. Fudan had more than 100 spin-offs by 2003 from its University Enterprise Management Office, some public, such as Fudan Fuhua Pharmaceuticals and Shanghai Fudan Microelectronics.

By 2010 and at least 40 university-owned enterprises were listed in China from a pool of more than 5,000 profitable businesses backed by the institutions, according to the China Papers series.

However, part of the reason for universities’ importance in China was the underdeveloped state of research and development at companies, which has been gradually changing as state-owned and private enterprises continue to expand. But what China’s experience and the best examples from Europe and the US all have in common are a sizeable commitment, support at the highest levels and talented teams of people that are able to identify how to best help portfolio companies in a way appropriate for the market conditions they face.

It is this potential others are seeking to emulate, with one eye on the consequences for budgets and resources if they fail. In a globalised world for capital and people, innovation is a comparative advantage. Universities – whether through faculty or students – are one of the two primary sources of business innovation, the other being companies themselves.

Applying a successful university venturing programme, therefore, offers them money to support budgets under pressure from falling public funding and often-capped tuition fees. It also offers better links to business with the insights from technology back to research and jobs and work experience for graduates that helps attract the brightest minds.

To rework playwright George Bernard Shaw for the new world, perhaps we can say those who can, must teach as well as do.

Box: Arab renaissance, By James Mawson

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the religious birthplace and spiritual home of Islam, is hoping to kickstart what senior government advisers call a Muslim technological renaissance where the region is reborn as the home of knowledge and skills. As an adviser to one of the kingdom’s ruling princes said: “I have watched an archaic innovation ecosystem- uncoordinated and siloed in labour and finance – become a role model of relative coordination as leaders push across departments in a short space of time to enable an ecosystem to erupt.

“It is the beginning of the Arab renaissance – history will record what has gone on in the past two
years and over the next three years is an order-of-magnitude shift to bring back an Arabled technological society. It has captured the mind, soul, energy and bright-eyed enthusiasm of Arabs that have maybe studied at Stanford and want to bring back the entrepreneurial drive to start a company.”

Saudi Arabia’s plans are certainly one of the most complete proposals to build an elite education system and join it with government support and existing corporations launching corporate venturing units to fund and develop an innovation ecosystem to provide work and employment for a rising number of the country’s youth.

It is also a change from relying on selling petroleum deposits to fund a social safety net and maintain power among a few elite families.

The scale of the potential upheaval has only started to take effect. Switzerland-based non-profit World Economic Forum’s annual Global Competitiveness Report 2011-2012
put Saudi Arabia in 17th place, and 26th for innovation. The report added: “The country has seen a number of improvements to its competitiveness in recent years, which have resulted in a solid institutional framework, efficient markets and sophisticated businesses.

“Health and education do not reach the standards of other countries at similar income levels. Boosting these areas, in addition to fostering a more efficient labour market (50th), are of great significance to Saudi Arabia given the growing numbers of its young people who will enter the labour market over the next years.

“More efficient use of talent will increase in importance as global talent shortages loom on the horizon and the country attempts to diversify its economy, which will require a more skilled and educated workforce. Last, but not least, the use of the latest technologies can be enhanced.”

The demographic consequence of a country growing in population to 33.6 million by 2020 from 26 million is compounded by Saudi Arabia’s relative youthful
pyramid. About two-thirds of the country’s population are under 25 and unemployment for people between 20 and 24 is 30.2%, nearly three times the national average.

To boost education standards and train this workforce for jobs in a knowledge-based economy, rather than one geared just for exploration and production of oil and gas, the country plans to invest in basic and applied research and development (R&D).

Nabil Shalaby, an expert in entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises at Saudi Arabia’s Development Eastern Province Chamber of Commerce & Industry, in a presentation listed 19 business development and innovation initiatives the country was undertaking as part of its plans to spend over SR32bn ($8.6bn) on R&D.

The allocation will represent 2.5% of the kingdom’s gross domestic product of more than SR1 trillion, up from 0.25% to 0.5% at present.

These science parks, “plastics valleys” and institutes include building King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Kaust) in 2009 and founding the Princess Noura bint Abdul Rahman University for
women, which is designed to become the world’s largest centre of higher education for women worldwide. The king has also sponsored an initiative through the Higher Education Ministry to pay for 120,000 Saudi students to study outside the kingdom, with 30% of the successful applicants female. Kaust is modelled on the US-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in trying to avoid academic silos forming – it avoids academic departments or tenureship – but building cross-functional teams linked to new energy resources, new catalysts or catalytic reactions for environment and sustainability.

In a paper, Kaust – An Economic Development Model for MENA Research Universities,

Daniel Winfield from RTI International and Terence McElwee from Kaust, said: “Kaust represents a promising new model for the role of research universities in national and
regional economic development.

“Not just an educational institution, Kaust has funded research at more than 40 great universities around the world through its
Global Collaborative Research (GCR) programme, which has not only raised Kaust’s visibility and brand but has also helped attract top faculty and students to Kaust.”

In addition, the university is designed with “economic development as a core mission”, the paper added. This means “Kaust bundles its patent rights with practical know-how and engineering services in the form of
a ‘product development package’ to enable companies to better quantify risk, reward and time to market,” according to Winfield and McElwee.

As well industrial collabora-tion and tech transfer, the Kaust Economic Development division has set up a seed-and-later university venturing fund as part of a broader technology commercialisation
strategy focused on the so-called valley of death that stymies early research discovery from becoming technology and products in the market.

The government-sponsored push to join up contiguous sources of capital to develop innovative ideas into reality has come with the creation of four economic cities by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (Sagia) and, in December, of the Saudi Company for Technological Development and Investment (Taqnia), chaired by prince Turki bin Saud Al Saud, who is also representative of the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (Kacst), which runs the Badir entrepreneurs programme. He said at its inaugural meeting: “By establishing Taqnia, the Saudi government hopes to build a number of companies based on solid industrial bases, creating a knowledge society and real Saudi-based technologies.

“Kacst and other research centres have a lot of R&D services and products ready to be marketed, and that is where Taqnia will come in to make use of the output of those research and related programmes.”

Alongside the formal state-sponsored drive to create an innovation ecosystem have come some of the country’s largest companies setting up corporate venturing units. Oil major Saudi Aramco’s unit will launch in the third quarter to complement its local development fund, Wa’ed, and in the past year phone operator STC has committed $50m to a fund managed by France-based venture capital firm Iris Capital, and chemicals company Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (Sabic) set up its ventures team in the Netherlands to invest in start-ups focused on advanced materials and composites, biomass for chemicals and materials,
and alternative energy and clean technology. All the new corporate venturing programmes have effectively global scope but with a purpose of bringing strategic benefits also back to the kingdom.

As Eng Saud bin Majed Al Daweesh, chief executive of STC Group, said in November when it committed to Iris: “The establishment of this fund comes as part of the kingdom’s strategic direction and its drive to transform to a knowledge-based economy by enriching the spirit of both initiative and innovation.”

Though Aramco has already had some success with its internal venturing programme, such as oil reservoir simulator software Gigapowers and nanotechnology robotic maker Resbots, Majid Mufti, head of Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, in February said the unit would act as “a continuous gateway for innovation [to enter Aramco], introduce new technologies we had not previously looked for and provided human resources at the start-ups with ‘skin in the game’ [as it owned equity]”.

Mufti said Aramco, which manages the country’s 260 billion barrels of recoverable oil, had two research and development centres for below ground and downstream
work as well as supporting Kaust and the energy and environmental research and policy centre, King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (Kapsarc). He said:

“There are many startups being created by experienced people who have worked at oil and services companies, such as Schlumberger,
that know the challenges we are facing but need funding support to help them.”

< p>He added: “Aramco is a steward of the country’s natural resource and Energy Ventures is part of a broader transformation going on in a shorter timeframe as by 2020 we want to be a worldleading
integrated energy and chemicals company with greater energy efficiency and use of alternative energy.”

This goal meant the corporate venturing unit would invest in three areas – upstream production of energy, downstream use and market demand companies, and
energy efficiency and renewable suppliers, such as in solar power.

While Energy Ventures could invest anywhere, Mufti said it was starting in the US and Europe and wanted to facilitate start-ups deploying or developing in Saudi
Arabia.

As well as direct investments, Aramco is commiting money to venture capital funds and hired Jon Nieman from the US to move to Saudi Arabia to help evaluate
fund managers. Nieman had previously founded consultancy firm Redline Partners and worked in US bankState Street’s private equity consulting group.

Also in February, but in a separate presentation, Fahad Mushayt, vice-president of corporate strategy at STC Group, said the phone operator had set up a ventures
unit as part of its drive to “become the broadband operator of choice offering ubiquitous access and innovative content and applications to all customers”. A ventures
operation meant it would see innovation earlier and “provide to STC antenna function to new local and international partnerships to drive its growth strategy domestically
and internationally”.

It would also help promote entrepreneurialism in the kingdom. However, although there has been what Mushayt called a “surge of investment for entrepreneurialism”
since 2010 in Saudi Arabia, the base level has been relatively low.

Venture deals have increased from single to double digits from 2006, and fundraising has gone from $100m 2006 back to zero in 2009 and up to $300m in 2010. Outside
the three most recent corporate venturing funds by Aramco, STC and Sabic, there are relatively few venture funds, such as Abraaj Capital’s Riyada Enterprise Development
(RED), which was set up in 2009 with $650m,

Malaz Capital and Accelerator Technology.

This extract of an article that was first published in Global Corporate Venturing in June. See more here