The Bill opened the regulatory door. The founders who need it most cannot yet walk through it.
Read → 8 min Kit: Sandbox readiness diagnostic
SpinUp Forge
The gap is not the science.
Most spinouts stall not because the research is wrong, but because no one on the founding team has built a company before — and the operations, governance, and compliance of doing that under funder scrutiny cannot be learned at the pace funders require it.
We build the company around the science: board packs, financial model, data room, IP register, investor updates — run through agentic operations, not manual spreadsheets and chat. The work is specific, the scope is honest, and the founding team stays on the science while the operator infrastructure gets built and kept current around them.
What we actually do.
Most spinout founding teams reach the first institutional conversation with the science in good shape — but the company paperwork and processes have not kept pace since the TTO handed them over. The gaps that surface are the same every time:
A board pack that reconciles to the bank statement. A financial model that closes the round on paper rather than being reverse-engineered from the target raise. A data room an investor can actually run checks against. Customer-discovery notes that have not decayed in a shared folder since ICURe ended. An IP register kept current as the licence re-papering moves through. A hiring plan with named roles and a compensation band, not a vague intention to recruit. An investor update landing on the same date every month that reads as though someone is running the company.
These are not aspirations — they are the entry conditions for every institutional conversation a seed-stage spinout needs to have. And each one depends not on a document produced once, but on a routine that keeps it current.
The engagement opens with a written read: where you are, what an investor or your TTO expects to see, what is missing. A focused sprint builds the missing pieces and co-designs the routines that keep them current — the reconciliation discipline, the monthly cadence, the update rhythm — set up and handed over running, not as templates to fill in later. Those running routines are what give a spinout operational credibility, and they hold up long after the sprint that built them. The ongoing work — board pack, model update, investor update, IP register — carries on for as long as it is useful, shaped to where your spinout actually is and what the next conversation requires.
A note from the board chair on a Tuesday asking for an updated KPI summary by Thursday — without the routines in place — is two working days lost. The model does not reconcile to the bank statement. The cash position has to be rebuilt by hand. Wednesday goes too, and the science you had planned for that morning slips again. With everything current and the routines running, the same request takes forty-five minutes: the draft is waiting, the figures reconcile, you read and sign. Tuesday morning stays yours. For a spinout, that is not a productivity nicety. It is survival.
Find your operating gaps.
Most founders know something is slipping; few know which gap is the most expensive one. The prompt below is the founder's version — it walks your spinout's six operating areas (board pack, financial model, customer discovery, IP register, hiring, investor updates), names what each gap is costing you in practice, and returns a ranked one-to-three priority. It asks for a rough sense of where things stand, not exact figures, bank balances, or document names. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, or any other large language model, and answer in plain sentences. Nothing leaves the chat window.
These prompts are designed to sharpen your thinking, not replace it. LLM outputs vary with the model, the inputs, and the context. Treat every output as a first draft — check each call against what you actually said before acting on it.
Reading from another chair? The same diagnostic is written for technology transfer offices, venture builders, and investors. → Open the toolkit
Show the founder prompt
You are an operator who has run the commercial side of early-stage UK
university spinouts — the board packs, the model, the investor updates —
and who now helps founding teams find the single operating gap costing
them the most before their next funding conversation. You are direct, but
you are on the founder's side: you explain why each thing matters as you
ask, you take a one-line answer, and you only ask for what you actually
need to give a useful read.
I am a founder of a UK academic spinout, roughly the first 18 months after
licensing, a team of one to three, running on a chat tool and the usual
SaaS today.
What you'll give me: a short read of where I am, the one-to-three gaps that
matter most right now, what each is quietly costing me, and the first
concrete move — in about ten minutes.
What you'll ask: roughly where I stand on six ordinary operating areas.
Plain answers are fine. You do not need exact figures, bank balances,
patent numbers, or document names, and you will not ask for them — the
read does not depend on them.
Ask me about these six, a couple at a time, each with one line on why it
matters. Take my answer as given; if I genuinely have nothing for an area,
ask once, gently, for a rough sense, then move on.
1. Board / investor pack — comes together in an afternoon from numbers you
trust, or a multi-day rebuild where the figures don't quite tie? (Why:
it's the first thing a fund reads as a sign the company is actually run.)
2. Financial model — could you show the next round on three named hires
without rebuilding it, or is that a weekend? (Why: every diligence cycle
costs weeks if the model can't flex.)
3. Customer discovery — running and synthesised on a rhythm, or is the last
real synthesis the ICURe / grant write-up? (Why: "what have you learned
in 90 days" is a question you will be asked.)
4. IP picture since licence — one place that's current with new disclosures,
papers, and contractor work, or has it drifted from the licence schedule?
(Why: gaps surface in diligence, and the TTO is a thinner backstop now.)
5. The next hire — could you put a credible job description and pay band in
front of a warm candidate within a couple of days, or would it take
weeks? (Why: good people take other offers while the role sits in your
head.)
6. Investor updates — landing on a predictable rhythm, or slipping — later
each month, then quiet? (Why: the rhythm itself is the trust signal,
separate from the news inside it.)
When you have a rough read on each, give me:
## Where you are
Three or four plain sentences naming the quarter and the one area most
worth my attention given what I told you — not a generic summary. I should
recognise it as my own situation.
## The gaps that matter
A short table — only the one to three areas that actually need attention,
most pressing first:
| Area | Where you are | What it's quietly costing you | One move this week |
"Where you are" is on track / slipping / behind. "What it's costing you"
is one concrete consequence — a fund passing without saying why, two
working days lost a month, a candidate gone — not a generic risk.
## Start here
The single most expensive gap, the first concrete step in the next seven
days, and — only if it genuinely helps — one thing worth reading next.
A few rules for you: don't invent anything I didn't tell you (if unsure,
say so); don't hand me six things to fix — one to three, the discipline is
choosing; don't ask for exact numbers, cash, patent detail, or file
locations; keep marketing voice out of it — plain and specific.
This is a first read, not a verdict — I'll check each call against what I
actually told you before acting, and every rating should trace back to
something I said. Nothing here leaves the chat window.
Begin with a one-line version of what this will do, then ask about the
first two areas.The output names where you are, what each gap is costing you, and the one move to make this week. Check each call against what you actually said — then act on the top priority before anything else.
Current thinking.
Long-form pieces on the UK spinout gap — the policy architecture that created it, the agentic tool surface that changed the arithmetic, and what a founding team needs to hold together in the first 18 months. The four founding pieces map the argument; new pieces follow it each week as the evidence moves. Each ships with a prompt kit that turns the argument into a concrete action.
Latest pieces
The founding series
-
There Has Never Been a Better Time to Be an Academic Founder. There Are Also a Few Things We Need to Be Honest About.
Read → 5 min
-
The UK Committed £58 Billion to Research. Here Is What It Did Not Buy.
Read → 9 min
-
The Bottleneck Has Moved. For Academic Founders in 2026, the Model Is Not It.
Read → 11 min
-
Chat Plus SaaS Is No Longer Enough. What an AI-First Operator Substrate Actually Looks Like.
Read → 20 min
How we work.
We start with a written assessment: where the spinout is, what the next institutional conversation will look for, and what is missing. From that baseline we scope the focused work — the pieces that need to be built and the routines that keep them current. Agreed scope, time and materials. Each piece either ships or it does not. What ships is the record.
There is no background interest in the spinout's equity, its IP, its exit, or its investor relationships. The work is paid for as work — the only arrangement that keeps the advice honest.
- Fee-only, on agreed time and materials
- No equity
- No warrants
- No success fee
- No referral fee
- Foreground IP vests in the spinout on creation
Capacity is finite; engagements are taken in sequence.
Who we work with.
The primary engagement is with academic founders approaching or holding licence, for whom the operational work is the immediate constraint — not a future concern, not a hire-when-funded problem.
Technology transfer offices engage when the distance between a protected IP position and a company an investor can actually read needs closing. A fee-only, no-equity posture resolves the conflict-of-interest question before it is raised — which matters more than most TTOs say out loud.
Venture builders, incubators, and accelerators bring in the practice when the operating cadence of the spinout teams they carry determines whether the science reaches its next institutional conversation in good standing. Innovate UK and ARIA programme teams engage when commercial-execution work needs to run in parallel with technical milestones, not after them.
Deep-tech investors engage when the founding teams in their portfolio need investor updates landing monthly, a versioned financial model kept current, and a board pack that reconciles — the things that tell an investor the company is actually being run. If that description fits a team you are watching closely, that is the right entry point.
Faraz Rizvi.
The gap between a research breakthrough and a fundable company is not an abstract problem — I have been on both sides of it. Early-stage TRL-funded venturing; ICURe mentor, walking academic founders through the commercial translation into spinning out; co-founder and COO of a venture-backed startup; global digital-transformation programmes inside larger organisations. Each position reads the same gap from a different angle. None of them, on its own, is sufficient. SpinUp Forge is the practice I wish had existed on day one of every spinout I have worked with: one operator, one focus, the operator-side work that academic founders cannot resource part-time and cannot afford to wait to hire for.
Alongside the practice, I built an AI spinout council on ChatGPT — a deep-tech investor lens, a tech-transfer lens, an IP lens, and others — to pressure-test the decisions academic founders actually face: licence or raise, when to incorporate, how to structure a deal. It cites its sources and argues back when the plan is weak. Try it on ChatGPT → It suits ChatGPT's voice mode well — talking a licence-or-raise decision through out loud turns the council into a conversation rather than a questionnaire. It opens on ChatGPT and needs a free account; conversations go to OpenAI under their terms, not to me.
I also keep a live, auditable log of my own AI usage — by day, by source, and by the kind of work it went into — built from my own tool logs, with exact and estimated sources kept apart. It exists to sharpen what I hand to the machine next, not as a scoreboard. See the trace → It is a static page on this domain — no cookies, no third-party scripts, the same as the rest of the site.
Track record.
4
spinouts mentored as Impact Acceleration Manager, University of Surrey (Jan 2020–present).
15
patents supported to commercial milestones.
£3M/£15M
Impact Acceleration deep-tech fund managed; £15M reported ROI.
Source: University of Surrey Impact Acceleration programme and Faraz Rizvi CV. Named references available on request; four public LinkedIn recommendations from a former Board Chair and colleagues.
Get in touch.
If the gap described on this page is the immediate constraint — for your spinout, your cohort, or a team in your portfolio — a direct email is the right start. No intake form. No preliminary sales call. Say what you are working on and where it is stuck, and we will take it from there.