Earlier today, I wrote an article with the same title: Do Universities sell their IP at too low a price?
I was trying to understand what I see as a new phenomenon, namely the pre-VC fund (managers or maybe only entrepreneurial business angels who won in the past and now are looking for new investments) and used some examples (Imprimatur Capital, Bridgehead Group, Bridge BioResearch).
In another context I read an interesting report which pointed me to PriceWaterhouseCoopers and their MoneyTreeReports.
The MoneyTree Report is a quarterly study of venture capital investment activity in the United States. As a collaboration between PricewaterhouseCoopers and the National Venture Capital Association based upon data from Thomson Financial, it is the only industry-endorsed research of its kind. The MoneyTree Report is the definitive source of information on emerging companies that receive financing and the venture capital firms that provide it. The study is a staple of the financial community, entrepreneurs, government policymakers and the business press worldwide.
The interesting point here is the overall drop in venture capital investment since the "Bubble" burst around 2000 and the trend to see business angels consolidate their activity to move downstream in the funding pipeline, ie. investing larger sums than usual. But it's also evident that the US now also realizes a widening gap between early stage and VC funding.
My interpretation is that the MoneyTreeReport explains why there is space for new types of investors, who take a proactive role to "scout" for new opportunities, fund proof-of-concept stages of devevlopment and then sell on to downstream investors: VCs etc.
I have earlier described - in this blog- how the IP Group in the UK does this brilliantly, or how Cancer Research Technology , also from UK, is a master in scouting for and developing proof-of-concept for its line of research and business.
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