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More academic institutions are getting into the startup investment game, including the University of California. Pending the approval of the UC Board of Regents this Thursday, the University of California will launch a $250 million investment fund called UC Ventures at the beginning of 2015.
“UC Ventures is the result of careful evaluation of best practices to develop the most effective investment vehicle to capture the economic value the University of California is creating through its pioneering research,” said UC Chief Investment Officer Jagdeep Singh Bachher, in a statement. “Our goal is to build upon the technology commercialization efforts at UC while carefully managing potential risk exposures. We are confident an independent UC Ventures will achieve this.”
The fund comes shortly after the National Science Center granted UCLA, USC and Cal-Tech $3.75 million to help spin-off startups from their research. The University of California’s new fund is part of a growing trend of academic institutions trying to get into the startup game. Several famous startups, like Facebook, Snapchat, and Dell, started on college campuses.
For its part, UCLA aleady has a fund called the UCLA Venture Capital fund, an accelerator, and the Price Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, which is part of the Anderson School of Management. Several notable UCLA tech lumaries include Vint Cerf, the father of the internet, Allen Adham, co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, and Tom Anderson, co-founder of MySpace.
The fund will be drawn from the University of California endowment and UC Ventures will be an independent investment organization. University of California’s Office of the Chief Investment Officer will help launch and oversee the fund. In partnership with the UC system’s 10 universities the fund will also create an “independent advisory board of leading figures in Silicon Valley and California.”
UC President Janet Napolitano, said, “In addition to any financial benefits, we see this fund as a potential vehicle for providing resources to support the basic research and talent — among both faculty and students — required to develop innovations that can benefit California and the world.”
If it launches, the UC Venture fund will have quite a network to invest in. The UC system has 10 campuses, 233,000 students, 190,000 faculty and staff, and 1.7 million alumni alive today.
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