„Heidelberg has great potential“
Prof Patzel-Mattern, Dr Haschke, according to the Start-up Association, Heidelberg was the city with the most start-ups in Germany last year relative to its population. In your opinion, what are the key reasons that contributed to this?
Prof Dr Katja Patzel-Mattern: In recent years, an innovation ecosystem has formed in Heidelberg, with many strong partners such as the university, but also other scientific institutions and the city itself. We have reorganised and professionalised start-up support at the university in recent years, and created an advisory service that starts with initial advice for those interested in setting up a business, and accompanies the founders through various phases. This is paying off.
Dr Raoul Haschke: The result is the outcome of a long-term development, because we have been among the top 6 in the city rankings for the past five years. Heidelberg is a very strong start-up city and has great potential. With our activities, we want to leverage this potential even further and increase the number of start-ups even more.
To professionalise the promotion of start-ups, Heidelberg University has set up the transfer agency hei_INNOVATION and the patent exploitation agency ScienceValue, among others. What are the main tasks of these organisations?
Haschke: The transfer agency hei_INNOVATION aims to make the knowledge generated at the university available to society. To this end, we support our academics and students in a needs-orientated manner and with centralised services. In addition to individual advice, we have also established an Entrepreneurial Skills Certificate, and organised a wide range of events to network and train people who want to set up their businesses.
Patzel-Mattern: ScienceValue Heidelberg is a professional patent commercialisation agency. It covers the entire process of exploiting and utilising intellectual property. As a subsidiary of the university, it supports founders in the patent application process. Patent law is indeed a very complex topic, and the university has to be quick because innovation always has a half-life. We therefore have to ensure that the founders get their products onto the market and that exploitation rights are made available in good time and, above all, in a legally secure manner. As an educational institution, we have become much more agile in this area in recent years and will continue to develop in the future.
In addition to a good idea, start-ups need money. Heidelberg University offers consulting services for funding applications – are there also activities to mobilise private capital?
Haschke: First of all, private investors naturally know that there are federal funding programmes, and therefore often prefer to leave the very early stages to the state, to minimise risk. For those who have already founded a company, we have developed networking formats such as the annual Life Science Investor Day with the city and other research institutions via Heidelberg Startup Partners e.V., BioRN e.V. and other partners. In addition, we offer monthly online formats such as the Venture Capital Meet and Greet to allow investors to introduce themselves and make contact with start-ups. For more private DeepTech funding, however, investors often simply need more staying power. The development times of quantum, fusion or medical technology simply do not correspond to the terms of many venture capital funds.
Patzel-Mattern: If we can believe the predictions that DeepTech is the market of the future, then we can at least be optimistic that investors will approach the market with adapted investment strategies in the future. For us as a university, it is an important but also challenging task to inform private investors about how technologies are developing. One place where we can do this well is our start-up hub, which we will be opening soon. There, we offer very young start-ups subsidised office space where the founders can establish contacts with investors and industries.
Apart from the question of money, what else often prevents students and scientists from starting up?
Patzel-Mattern: There are various points. There is often a lack of role models, or they are not immediately visible. This is particularly true concerning gender. We want to use female role models to motivate women, who have so far been underrepresented among founders. Social background also plays a role. We see that people from entrepreneurial families find it much easier to found a start-up than people from social classes in which this topic plays virtually no role. In Germany in particular, there is also the fact that founders are quickly regarded as „failures“ if they do not immediately succeed with their companies. However, there needs to be more understanding of the fact that failure is also an opportunity to learn from it for the next time.
Germany is generally regarded as a country that is strong in research but struggles to commercialise new technologies. Do you agree?
Patzel-Mattern: Money indeed seeks innovation. Where money is available and there is a high willingness to invest, innovation is made marketable. From a global perspective, that's a good thing because it allows innovation to take effect. Economically, however, this may be a challenge for individual countries. In Germany, there is a growing realisation that we need to increase start-up activity. As a university, we see it as our task to make scientific innovations and academic knowledge socially fruitful wherever possible, and thus also contribute to economic development. Basic research creates the basis for innovation. Universities must therefore always be in a position to research and teach free from utilitarian considerations or private-sector dependencies.
To what extent does Heidelberg University promote international exchange in the area of start-up support?
Haschke: As a university, we have foreign representatives in the USA, Chile, India and Japan. The USA is of course still the most exciting place when it comes to start-ups, where you can learn a lot and where we also network closely. But the other locations are no less exciting: Start-up Chile is one of the most important ecosystems in South America. India is the start-up nation of the future, where tens of thousands of start-ups are already being founded every year. Finally, Japan has similar structures and challenges to Germany. Together we can develop further.
One of the goals of the German government's start-up strategy was to facilitate spin-offs from science and to strengthen cooperation between universities, investors and companies. What expectations do you have of the future government?
Patzel-Mattern: First of all, I would like to see the continuation of planned programmes such as the Startup Factories from the Startup Strategy. However, I firmly believe that this will happen. The WIN initiative is an important building block for mobilising capital for science-based start-ups. As we see a great need here, I would like to see a sustainable mobilisation. In addition, more long-term support structures are needed for the entire area of transfer from science. At the moment, there are mainly project-financed funds, which can stimulate a lot, but knowledge is often quickly lost again after the end of a project phase.
