SpinUp Forge
The gap is not the science.
The UK has built the policy environment and the tool surface to spin out a generation of credible companies. The teams that stall after licence rarely stall because the science let them down. They stall because the job changed and nobody named the change.
SpinUp Forge is the operator-side discipline that closes that gap, finance, operations, and product, shipped against named artefacts (board pack, financial model, data room, customer-discovery synthesis, IP register, hiring plan, investor update) on a schedule academic founders can sustain.
The page below is one continuous argument. The first section names the work, the seven named artefacts SpinUp Forge ships and the engagement arc through which they ship, and the section after it links to four pieces of thinking on why this work has become the operator-side discipline a UK academic spinout needs in its first eighteen months post-licence. Beneath those, the practice details, how we work, who we have worked with, who we work with, and how to reach us, sit where they earn the read. There is one affordance on this page that is not prose: a triage prompt that routes a visitor to the piece of thinking most relevant to their stage and gap.
What the work actually is.
The work SpinUp Forge ships is specific. A board pack assembled on time, with KPI definitions consistent across quarters and a cash bridge that reconciles to the last bank statement. A financial model that closes the round on paper, not one that back-calculates from the number the founders wanted to raise. A data room a partner can run a quote sheet against. A customer-discovery synthesis that does not decay in a shared folder six months after ICURe ended. An IP register kept current as TTBEO re-papering moves through. A hiring plan with named, not-yet-hired roles rather than a vague intention to recruit. An investor update that lands on schedule, every month, and reads as though someone is running the company. These are not aspirations. They are the objects a seed-stage spinout needs in order to reach its next institutional conversation in good standing.
A typical engagement follows an arc. It begins with a written read of the gap, a structured assessment of where the artefact surface stands against what a serious investor or TTO would require to proceed. From that read, a focused readiness sprint builds the missing objects and establishes the cadence procedures that will carry them forward. Where the timeline to a raise is longer, a sustained investor sprint runs the operating work in parallel with the science over several months. The ongoing monthly work, board pack, model update, investor update, IP register diff, continues for as long as it is useful. The arc is not a fixed product with a fixed price; it is shaped to the spinout's actual position.
On a Tuesday morning without this in place, a note from the board chair asking for an updated KPI summary by Thursday is a two-day interruption. The financial model does not reconcile to the bank statement. The cash bridge has to be rebuilt by hand. Wednesday is gone too, and the science work planned for that morning slips again. With the artefacts current and the procedures running, the same request takes forty-five minutes, the draft is waiting, the figures reconcile, and the founder reads and signs. Tuesday morning returns. The argument for operator-side discipline in a spinout is not a productivity argument. It is a survival argument.
Current thinking.
Four pieces on what the UK spinout gap actually costs, and what closing it requires in 2026. Each piece ships with a paired prompt kit that converts the argument into a concrete action.
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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 → Paired kit: rate-of-change self-locator
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The UK Spent £58 Billion on Research. Here Is What It Did Not Buy.
Read → Paired kit: funnel-position diagnostic
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The Bottleneck Has Moved. For Academic Founders in 2026, the Model Is Not It.
Read → Paired kit: thesis-distinction confirmation
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Chat Plus SaaS Is No Longer Enough. What an AI-First Operator Substrate Actually Looks Like.
Read → Paired kit: operational-gap audit
A prompt to find your operational gaps.
The prompt below asks you a short set of questions about how your spinout is running, names the operational gaps it finds, explains what each gap costs you in practice, and gives you a ranked one-to-three list of what to focus on next. Paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, or any other large language model and run it in one conversation. Nothing leaves the chat window.
These kits are designed to help your thinking and focus. LLM outputs vary depending on the model, the inputs, and the context. Treat every output as a draft for your own review, not a finished deliverable.
You are a senior UK seed-stage spinout operator. You are direct and
specific. You will not accept vague or aspirational answers; if I give
one, you will ask me for the specific dated artefact or the specific
named workflow it refers to.
Context to assume:
- I am a founder of a UK academic spinout in my first 18 months
post-licence.
- The team is one to three people, mostly academic.
- We run on chat access and SaaS subscriptions today; no procedure is
written down.
- Do not assume I have read anything on the SpinUp Forge site. Do not
recommend pieces or articles. Your job is to surface my operational
gaps and help me prioritise.
Before drafting anything, ask me one question at a time. Cover the
six operating areas a seed-stage spinout has to hold together:
1. Board pack. When was the last board pack assembled, what quarter
did it cover, how many hours did it take, and did the cash bridge
tie to a specific bank statement?
2. Financial model. When was the model last meaningfully updated,
what changed, and can it answer "18-month plan to the next round
on three named hires" without a rebuild from scratch?
3. Customer-discovery synthesis. How many interviews in the last 30
days, where are the notes stored, when was the synthesis last
meaningfully updated, and what are the top three customer
objections you have in writing right now?
4. IP register. What is on the licence schedule, what invention
disclosures have happened since licence, are contractor agreements
explicit on assignment, and when did the TTO last receive an
updated register from you?
5. Hiring pipeline. What is the most overdue role, is there a JD in
writing, is there a named compensation band and an interview
rubric, and how long has the role been open?
6. Investor update cadence. List the dates of every investor update
in the last six months, the word count of the most recent, and
the named metrics each covered.
Do not accept generic answers. If I say "monthly", ask when the last
instance was. If I say "we have a model", ask when it was last opened.
Refuse to rate any area on generalities.
When you have founder-stated evidence for each of the six areas,
produce:
## My operational gaps
A markdown table with five columns: Area | Severity | Evidence |
What this costs in practice | First concrete action this week.
- Severity is one of: On track / Slipping / Behind / Materially at
risk. Severity must quote the founder-stated evidence that justifies
the rating.
- "What this costs in practice" is one sentence translating the gap
into its operational consequence: a missed conversation, a slipped
raise, two working days lost, a fund passing politely without
explaining why.
- "First concrete action this week" is a single named action, not
a generality. Not "improve investor updates" but "draft an
investor-update procedure with named inputs (KPI deltas, hiring
status, IP diffs, customer notes) and a fixed send date of the
fifth of each month".
## Prioritisation
One to three areas, ranked most-pressing first, with a one-sentence
rationale per entry citing the founder-stated evidence and the
specific upcoming conversation or milestone the prioritisation is
calibrated against.
You must not:
- fabricate dates, evidence, or context the founder did not state.
- use autonomy verbs ("the agent will decide", "automatically
executes").
- recommend tools, vendors, or service providers.
- recommend more than three priorities; if more than three areas are
Materially at risk, ask one more clarifying question rather than
widening.
- assume the founder is more (or less) ready than the evidence the
founder has stated.
Review gate: this is a draft. The founder reviews every severity
rating, every cost-in-practice sentence, and every prioritisation
entry against what they actually said. If any line does not feel
grounded in the evidence, the founder edits it.
Eval check (run against your own output before returning it):
- Every severity rating quotes founder-stated evidence in the
Evidence column.
- Every "What this costs in practice" sentence names a specific
operational consequence, not a generic risk.
- Every prioritisation entry names one concrete action, not a
theme.
Begin by asking me about area 1.The output is a ranked picture of where your operating substrate is holding, where it is slipping, and what to do about it this week. Run it once, edit the severity ratings against what you actually said, and pick the top priority to act on before running anything else.
How we work.
We work directly with the founding team to produce an assessment of where they are, and prioritise what they need to do. From that baseline, the work is scoped to a focused programme of artefacts the team needs to reach their next institutional conversation. We work on an agreed scope based on time and materials, and each piece of the work either ships or it does not. The artefacts are the record.
The practice operates from a single structural posture. 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.
- 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.
Track record.
spinouts mentored as Impact Acceleration Manager, University of Surrey (Jan 2020–present).
patents supported to commercial milestones.
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.
Faraz Rizvi.
I am a UK operator-practitioner working on the gap between a research breakthrough and a fundable company. I have worked in early-stage TRL-funded venturing, mentored academic founders through ICURe and into spinning out, served as co-founder and COO of a venture-backed startup, and led global digital-transformation programmes inside larger organisations. Each of those positions reads the same gap differently; the view from all four is what SpinUp Forge is built on. SpinUp Forge is the practice I wish I had had 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.
Who we work with.
The practice works with academic founders approaching or holding licence, for whom the artefact surface is the immediate constraint. It works with technology transfer offices navigating the distance between a protected IP position and a company an investor can read, a fee-only, no-equity posture resolves the conflict-of-interest question before it is raised. Venture builders, incubators, and accelerators carrying spinout teams through the first 18 months engage when the operating cadence determines whether the science reaches its next institutional conversation in good standing. Innovate UK and ARIA programme teams bring in the practice when the commercial-execution work needs to run in parallel with technical milestones. Deep-tech investors engage when the founding teams in their portfolio need investor updates landing monthly, a versioned financial model maintained, and a board pack that reconciles, the things that tell an investor the company is being run.
Get in touch.
The conversation is open to academic founders, technology transfer offices, venture builders, incubators, and investors whose portfolio companies are working through the gap described above. There is no intake form and no preliminary sales call. The right entry point is a direct email, and the right next step follows from that.