Help Shape the Elsevier 4th Generation University Project

What are you considering as a spinout?
Companies that are started from a technology developed in a university or research centre.
In many cases, the university/research centre may hold equity in the company, but that is not required to be considered a spinout. The university/research centre might have agreements not including equity, such as royalty-only, or in which, for a combination of reasons, there is no formal agreement, but still there is a fundamental link to the institute. We still consider those cases as spinouts. This is often the case in countries with professor privilege, such as Sweden.

Our focus is on showcasing and benchmarking the value created by universities and research centres (societal value), not how much money these institutes are directly creating from commercialisation.

We don’t count as spinout companies those not born from university research that might have been supported, accelerated, or licensed some technology that is not their core starting IP.

Dealroom highly values institutions’ inputs but reserves the right to sanity-check them and make judgment calls. Dealroom features closed spinouts and other companies to keep track og historical trends.

What info do you need?
We just need the company’s name and an identifier (e.g., website, company registration number, LinkedIn). No additional information about the sector, status, funding, or other details is required.

What value do countries/universities get out of collaborating with Dealroom on this?
Your collaboration will enable us to better capture and highlight the startups and spinouts emerging from your institution. Doing so increases visibility and strengthens your university’s reputation within the global tech and innovation ecosystem, and ensures it will be accurately represented in the Elsevier 4GU report, which Dealroom supports with startups and spinouts data.

It also enables you to reliably report on your impact (number of startups that have achieved certain milestones, total amount of funding raised and combined enterprise value created, jobs created…) and benchmark with your peers.

What happens when spinouts are acquired? Do you consider the acquirer as a spinout sometimes?   
No, if a spinout from a university is acquired by another company, the acquirer is not considered a spinout from the university, even if shares are part of the acquisition deal. This is because we consider spinouts if they come from the academic research in that institution, not just if the institution has equity somehow.

Can a spinout be from two different universities?
Yes, there are many cases in which spinouts emerge from joint research from different institutes, at times also from different countries. We assess if the link is strong enough to all the various institutions, and if so, they are considered spinouts from more than one. Our assessment of this can differ from the one self-proclaimed by the university.

How is the data validated and enriched?
To ensure the highest data quality, Dealroom reviews all university submissions and cross-references them with our existing global database. If a company is not yet in our system, we enrich the profile using our proprietary research methods and data sources. This curation process ensures that every spinout is accurately represented and correctly linked to its founding institution, providing a reliable baseline for global benchmarking.

How is this data accessed and used?
The data becomes part of the Dealroom ecosystem, where it helps provide visibility to your institution’s innovation output. It is accessible to the tech and investment community via the Dealroom platform through various access levels, including our community accounts and professional subscriptions. Additionally, this curated dataset is shared with partners like Elsevier to support the 4th Generation University (4GU) analytics and institutional rankings, ensuring your university’s impact is recognized by global stakeholders.

How do you handle PII and GDPR requirements?

Our data collection is designed with privacy in mind, focusing strictly on professional identifiers and business-related information (such as LinkedIn profiles or company URLs) rather than sensitive Personal Identifiable Information (PII). This approach follows GDPR principles of data minimization and legitimate interest. By focusing on business-level data, we ensure a compliant, low-risk environment while still providing the necessary detail to track the success of the spinout ecosystem. Find our full privacy and GDPR disclosures here.