$50 million commercialisation fund<\/a> in late 2015, which included a $10 million commitment from the University of Melbourne, the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, the University of Queensland, and the CSIRO.<\/p>\nThe $20 million follow-on fund will help provide ongoing support to high-growth ventures that Uniseed has already backed.<\/p>\n
Until now, Devine says, Uniseed has had an investment cap of $2.5 million per deal with a focus on backing these ventures early on in their journeys, but the new fund will enable it to elongate its influence and support for companies as they become more successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the past we have had to step off of boards and lose a level of influence on investees,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get diluted down in terms of equity.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to greater returns on investment, Devine says backing later stage companies helps generate more jobs and create a stronger support system for innovative new ventures being built out of publicly funded institutions in Australia.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving this additional funding will help seed that,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Prior to launching its $50 million commercialisation fund and $20 million follow-on fund, Uniseed ran a $40 million fund from 2006 to 2016 backed by Australian Super, Melbourne University, Queensland University and the University of New South Wales.<\/p>\n
Melbourne University and Queensland University were its first backers when it launched a $20 million fund for ventures at the \u201cproof-of-concept\u201d stage back in 2000.<\/p>\n
\u201cOften when a technology is invented in a research organisation, it\u2019s just not quite developed enough to bring investment from [external investors],\u201d says Devine.<\/p>\n
Having a fund to give such ventures a chance is therefore critical, he says.<\/p>\n
With its institutional partners spending more than $4 billion a year on research, Devine said Uniseed gains early insights into game-changing technologies and opportunities for innovation evolving in Australia.<\/p>\n
As a result, Uniseed has helped develop ventures like Fibrotech, which was acquired by global biopharmaceutical company Shire for more than $US500 million ($658 million) in 2014, and BT Imaging, which specialises in solar equipment.<\/p>\n
\u201c[BT Imaging] has sold over $20 million in product,\u201d says Devine.<\/p>\n
Uniseed’s latest funding commitment is expected to bring more of such ventures to market with a \u201cstrong IP pipeline\u201d in development, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt takes [new ventures] to a point when other people will come in and invest,” says Devine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just a financial benefit, there\u2019s a whole lot of other benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Follow StartupSmart on<\/em> Facebook,<\/em> Twitter, LinkedIn and iTunes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The universities of Melbourne, New South Wales, Sydney and Queensland have teamed up with the CSIRO to invest $20 million<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,20,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45908"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45908\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45908"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45908"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45908"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}