Expert leadership for UK university spinouts

  • Investor-ready finance, operating cadence, and product/GTM clarity

  • Focused on academic ventures

Our Advantage

  • SpinUp Forge possesses expertise in supporting deep tech university spinouts, drawing on experience through programmes like ICURe and and incubators like SetSquared. We understand the unique challenges faced by cutting-edge technology ventures emerging from academic environments including the cultural shift, enabling us to provide tailored strategic guidance, commercialisation support, and hands-on execution.

  • At SpinUp Forge, we boost investor confidence with expert board governance and a well structured data room.

  • At SpinUp Forge, we offer flexible models tailored to your project’s needs, including retainers based on 1 day per week and sprint cycles lasting 2 to 4 weeks. This ensures consistent progress with weekly focus, while the sprint structure allows for agile iterative progress, rapid feedback, and continuous improvement. By combining a reliable retainer with time-boxed sprints, we deliver innovation and agility, adapting quickly to evolving requirements and maximising value throughout the collaboration.

What you get

A forged start-up stack:

  • CFO: runway model, management accounts, grant/equity strategy

  • COO: OKRs, operational optimisation, information security, compliance readiness

  • CPO: discovery → zero to one, roadmap, pricing/packaging, pilot design

  • Templates: investor data-room and board pack

Signals

You are a lean (probably academic) startup with deep expertise in your technology, but find the "business side" slowing you down

  • You have limited early/pre-revenue funds and need to raise. Building a model and forecasting a P&L and cashflow is new ground.

    Preparing for a raise investment or grant funding demands clear positioning and thorough diligence. Detailed documentation reduces risk and builds trust, minimising delays or rejections.

  • Corporate governance is a steep learning curve coming from an academic environment. Establishing good and scalable practices early on saves time, promotes growth, and de-risks investment

  • Strong technology and a clear vision are essential, but they alone are not enough. Effective go-to-market strategies and clear product priorities demand a different and often more specialised skill set to avoid lengthy or expensive distractions.

Why SpinUp Forge?

Challenge

UK universities churn out breakthrough research — and with it, thousands of new patents every year. Yet turning that science into a startup is a steep climb. Government initiatives like ICURe prove the push for entrepreneurial academia, but spinning out still means juggling two worlds. Most teams pair an academic CTO/CSO with an industry-savvy CEO… and then struggle to find time to actually run and scale. That’s where we step in.

Opportunity

SpinUp Forge lets you focus on what you do best—breakthrough science—while we shore up your finance, operations, and product foundations. With cost-effective fractional CxO support, you’ll de-risk every funding round, streamline delivery, and hit growth milestones faster. Backed by over 25 years of hands-on experience—from navigating TRL2+ grants and TTO spinout launches to founding, scaling and exiting tech startups, and consulting global enterprises—Release Research is the trusted partner that turns academic breakthroughs into investable businesses 🚀

Fractional Services

  • Cost effective & outcome-led execution

  • retainers and fixed-fee sprints

  • Runway & scenarios, board reporting, grant → equity bridge.

  • OKRs, KPIs, compliance & risk controls, HR, information and data security, supplier management, dashboards, investor reporting

  • Agile, discovery, roadmap, pricing/packaging, pilots, onboarding

Pricing

Retainer

£900 / day

1 day/week • 3–6 months • KPI

Investor Sprint

£6,000 - £10,000

2–4 weeks • Data-room & model

Product

£6,000 – £12,000

Gap-scan • discovery • Roadmap

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