Virginia springs together $10m seed fund

University of Virginia (UVA) today announced it will launch a $10m seed fund called UVA Licensing & Venture Group Seed Fund next year tasked with backing spinouts over a 10-year horizon.
UVA’s Health System will provide half of the funding, with the remainder sourced from unrestricted endowments. UVA Licensing & Venture Group, the university’s tech transfer office, will manage the vehicle, marking the first time the office has had the option of supplying spinouts capital directly.
The fund will begin making investments in 2016 and is open to UVA spinouts, companies founded by university faculty, staff or students, and participants in UVA’s i.Lab incubator program.
UVA hopes the investments will help emerging companies attain seed financing at a time when invested early-stage capital is at its lowest since 2002.
Some of the returns will be reinvested into the fund to push it beyond its targeted 10-year lifespan, with any additional proceeds put into UVA strategic research initiatives.
Day-to-day activities at the vehicle will fall within the remit of a director of new ventures currently being recruited by UVA Licensing & Ventures Group.
UVA Licensing & Venture Group Seed Fund is part of UVA’s efforts to increase university research expenditures by more than $200m within ten years.
The initiative is regarded as particularly important for UVA’s biomedical research ecosystem, helping potential medical breakthroughs transcend the early-funding gap.
Michael Straightiff, executive director of UVA Licensing & Venture Group, said: “The main goal is to build on prior university investments in innovation, translational research and commercialisation by actually investing in startup companies to help them grow at the seed stage of financing.”
Teresa Sullivan, president of UVA, added: “UVA’s research enterprise helps drive the economy locally, nationally and globally, while producing discoveries that lead to new technologies, products and therapies.
“The new seed fund will enable us to accelerate that process, and it will also help us attract faculty who will see the obvious benefit in the availability of seed funding for their startup activities.”