Deciding Whether to Start a Spin-Out

Setting up a Spin-out is a stressful activity and will distract you from your research. You will need to work with business managers and investors whose objectives may be different from your own.

Not all research is suited to becoming the platform for a new business.  Isis staff will help evaluate the business opportunities arising from your research.

Business and management skills will be needed for the spinning out, as well as running the subsequent business. Therefore it is important to identify a source of these early on.

If you intend to remain an employee of the University, you will need various consents from the University to participate in a spin-out.  The University will not generally give permission for its employees to take executive directorships in spinout companies. Therefore, if you take a directorship it should be non-executive.  Also, some funding agencies do not allow researchers to be directors.

There are potentially onerous legal responsibilities attached to being a director of a limited company. Before deciding to spin out you must understand these, and decide whether the benefit is worth the potential risk.

This is what you do

Decide what the company is to do, what is it going to sell, where is it going to get it, who is it going to sell to and how?  Decide on who is going to own the company, decide on who is going to work in it, what funding will be needed, and where will it come from?

A successful spin-out requires

• Time - which you may prefer to spend on research
• Skills and resources - which are not generally available in universities
• Mundane work - which you may prefer not to do (printing, stationary, premises, insurance, many meetings, etc.)
• A measure of luck.