Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it

Passing the milestone of 2,000 deals tracked on Global University Venturing may have seemed like a distant dream when this publication officially launched more than five years ago to keep tabs on the technology transfer ecosystem, but breaking through that number is exactly what happened in 2017, by the end of which investments and exits stood at a grand total of 2,151 identified since 2013.

Just as the sector has experienced ups and downs during this five-year period, as we cover in our data review, so GUV has undergone a few significant changes.

A range of staff have come and gone, not least our founding editor Gregg Bayes-Brown, who decided to join the other side of the fold and now works for Oxford University Innovation. Looking back now at five years’ of data and funds, also demands thanks to Gregg and everyone else who has helped us stay on top of all things tech transfer over the years.

Today, on the first anniversary of GUV relaunching this very magazine, the editorial team would like to take a moment to thank our current and former staff, particularly those behind the scenes who may not usually get the public recognition they deserve, such as our data guru Kaloyan Andonov, who generates all the informative graphs you have come to know and will also find in this issue, and Hannah Bayes-Brown, who works tirelessly to make sure deals are kept up to date in our database.

In last month’s editorial, Global University Venturing noted it was time to take a moment to celebrate after a bumper first quarter that has set this year up for some potentially record‑breaking figures.

We would also like to celebrate you, our subscribers, for the work you do each day for the ecosystem and for enabling us to serve you with daily news and in-depth features.

There is, of course, another celebration this month. As last year, Global University Venturing has given a range of awards to the best of the best in the ecosystem at the gala dinner of its GUV:Fusion conference in London. We invite you to read through those features in this issue.

Douglas Hansen-Luke, managing partner of Future Planet Capital, in his opening editorial to last year’s data review, hailed the international outlook of Global University Venturing, and this publication continues to maintain its global ambitions.

And so, Global University Venturing is proud to launch a second annual GUV:Fusion conference, in Houston, Texas, on November 8 and 9, when we will honour the world’s technology transfer leaders in a Powerlist that will rank the 100 most influential people in the ecosystem.

Some of you might recognise the Powerlist from our sister publication Global Corporate Venturing, which has run such a ranking for several years.

We are currently in the very early stages of putting the GUV Powerlist together, but we can already tell it will be a tough job – the talent in this space is truly outstanding.

“Your task is not to foresee the future, but to enable it,” wrote Antoine de Saint Exupéry once. You have all been doing an amazing job of achieving just that, so here’s to all of you, and here’s to the next five years.