University sets up company to foster high growth businesses

THE University of Warwick’s technology transfer office has established itself as a separate company looking to develop new high growth businesses.

Warwick Ventures has launched 49 knowledge-based spin-out companies employing more than 170 staff.

After a decade helping UoW researchers launch their own companies and commercialise their research, the transfer office has opted to follow suit.

Warwick Ventures director Ederyn Williams said: “In 10 years we have made over 100 patent applications, founded 49 companies and raised over £30m in funding for those companies from venture capitalists and business angels.

“That was achieved simply as an office within the university. As a company in our own right we can empathise even more with the companies we create and the partners we seek for them and win not just more respect but more funding and more opportunism to create new knowledge based businesses.”

Some of the 50 companies launched by Warwick Ventures include:
•    Warwick Audio Technologies:  Researchers from the University School of  Engineering, they founded a company producing a special flat thin speaker. It  now employs 10 staff in Warwick and South Wales
•    Streamline Computing: From Warwick’s Computer Science department, the firm now has more than 20 staff and sales of £5m.  It has provided supercomputer systems to over 100 customers in the UK and Europe, and is a leader in its field
•    Warwick Warp: Warwick computer scientists developed software for better computerised  fingerprint matching.  Now used in dozens of sites, and it is bidding for major contracts worldwide.