For universities, accelerators and programme partners
The research is world class. The evidence that anything commercialised is a headcount.
Enterprise and commercialisation funding is defended with participation: founders trained, teams supported, spin-outs formed. The gap between forming a spin-out and that spin-out being commercially ready is exactly where the money is lost, and it’s the part nobody measures.
The evidence problem, drawn
A headcount, or a line for every team.
Participation is a number you can report and nobody can argue with, because it says nothing. Sixty founders trained is true whether the cohort was transformed or untouched.
Measure each team at intake and again at exit and you have a line per team instead of a number per cohort. Some move a long way. Some do not, and knowing which is the point.
Attach that to the next bid and you are answering the question the funder actually asked.
An illustration of cohort movement, not observed data. Upward lines indicate improvement.
The gap
Commercial capability is the blocker, and it’s on nobody's dashboard.
Technical founders out of a research environment are strong on the product and unpractised at selling it. That's not a criticism. It's predictable, and it's fixable. But you can’t fix at scale what you can’t see per team.
The method names which of the four stages is weakest for each team and which of the four causes sits underneath it, so support is aimed rather than delivered to everyone identically.
- A dated position for every team at intake, across all four stages
- The named blocker per team, so support is targeted not generic
- Movement at exit, per team, in a report you can attach to the next bid
- A comparable measure across cohorts and across years
The bid
The next funding application, with evidence attached.
A bid that says "we trained 60 founders" competes against one that says "we measured 60 teams, named the blocker for each, and this proportion moved before demo day".
The second bid doesn’t exist today because the measurement doesn’t. After one cohort it does, and every subsequent cohort compounds it, because the instrument is versioned and doesn’t change underneath you.
On procurement: where a new supplier route would take longer than the funding window allows, we contract through an existing procured supplier. The measurement starts inside the window; the paperwork follows the route that already exists.
What every company in your cohort receives
A ten-page read each team can act on the same afternoon: the position, the blocker, and three specific actions with owners, dates and the evidence that would show each one worked.
Free to them, whether or not they ever speak to you again. The same result is what aggregates into your reporting, so there is one artefact and two audiences rather than a company view and a separate management view that can disagree.
What changes in the job
- Support is targeted at intake. Each team's named blocker, rather than the same workshop for everyone
- Teams that need more get more. Scarce adviser time allocated on evidence
- Cohorts become comparable across years and across departments, on one instrument that does not drift
- The next bid carries evidence. Movement per team instead of a headcount
- Spin-out readiness is visible before the raise, which is when it can still be fixed
The payoff
| Measure | Today | After one cohort |
|---|---|---|
| Commercial readiness of a spin-out or venture team | Adviser impression | A dated position across four stages |
| Where enterprise support should focus | The same workshop for everyone | Targeted at the named blocker per team |
| Evidence for the next funding bid | Participation counts | Movement per team, comparable across cohorts |
| Progress between cohorts and years | Not measured | Same instrument, same scale, every intake |