{"id":9693,"date":"2026-06-29T09:47:50","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=9693"},"modified":"2026-06-29T09:47:50","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T09:47:50","slug":"turning-university-research-into-real-impactful-businesses-right-here-in-sa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/?p=9693","title":{"rendered":"Turning university research into real, impactful businesses right here in SA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/iframe.iono.fm\/e\/1690419?layout=modern\" width=\"100%\" height=\"170\" frameborder=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SIMON BROWN:<\/strong> I\u2019m chatting now with Wayne Stocks from Stocks &amp; Strauss. Wayne, appreciate the early morning time. Your University Technology Fund\u00a0II has had final close \u2013 R400\u00a0million in there. What\u2019s the idea with the fund? From the name you\u2019re investing into IP, into business ideas coming out of universities around South Africa.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WAYNE STOCKS:<\/strong> Yes. Good morning. Thanks for having me. It\u2019s a privilege to be able to highlight this asset class, which has been well understood for too long. Yes. Our first fund was specifically mandated to invest in the commercialisation of IP and research that has been generated in South African universities.<\/p>\n<p>What we\u2019ve now done with Fund II and another fund, which is our Seed Fund thereafter, is we\u2019ve added a portion of alumni-founded technology companies. So what that means is a third of our mandate.<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019ve gone to a South African university and have an innovative business or technology business, we can invest in you, and that is what the thinking there was.<\/p>\n<p>The evolution from the first to the second fund was it\u2019s an ecosystem, and you build on that ecosystem. So alumni are part of that ecosystem. It also adds a little more sector exposure, which helps us balance our fund risk a little better.<\/p>\n<p>Read: Stocks &amp; Strauss raises R400m for university technology fund<\/p>\n<p><strong>SIMON BROWN:<\/strong> Gotcha. In a sense universities are by their very nature, by their design, hotbeds of innovation and ideas.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WAYNE STOCKS:<\/strong> One-hundred percent. South Africa has incredible universities and some of the minds that we have and the research that\u2019s coming out of it are fantastic. But nothing\u2019s happening to them. They\u2019re sitting on the shelf. And research really, in its true form, optimises for publication.<\/p>\n<p>So the incentives that universities have had, and that professors and researchers and the university have had, have been kind of misaligned to commercialise those ideas where they can really have an impact in the world.<\/p>\n<p>There are stories from many years ago where international companies have bought IP at a massively discounted amount and made billions from that. What we want to do is retain some of that value here in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, from a brain-drain perspective, if we are investing in bright researchers hopefully they\u2019ll stay in this country and make a difference.<\/p>\n<p>Read: Magda Wierzycka on reimagining SA venture capital<\/p>\n<p><strong>SIMON BROWN:<\/strong> Also true. Are there particular areas, sectors, fields that you that look at to invest into, or are you broadly agnostic as to what\u2019s coming through?<\/p>\n<p><strong>WAYNE STOCKS:<\/strong> One-hundred percent. Yes, we are a sector-agnostic fund. But what you tend to find is different universities have different faculties which produce better research than others, and that\u2019s just from the sector or the area that they\u2019re in and the hubs they\u2019re in.<\/p>\n<p>So if you look at what universities are really geared to do, it\u2019s very complex problems to solve challenges or opportunities that better the social position within the economy.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The best opportunities which we found are when there\u2019s cross-collaboration between faculties \u2013 \u00a0and that\u2019s when you really get something unique.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>If you have a corporate, you\u2019re very aligned to one sector and you can come to a university and find three different faculties working together to solve a unique problem in a different way \u2013 and that that creates a <em>lot<\/em> of IP and opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>Read:<br \/>University tech fund approves investments worth R28m<br \/>Africa startups turn inward as US AI boom drains venture capital<\/p>\n<p><strong>SIMON BROWN:<\/strong> Yes, I hadn\u2019t thought of that. Of course across the sectors \u2013 which is the sort of thing you wouldn\u2019t get in the sort of more mature corporate space.<\/p>\n<p>Where are you investing, at what stage? I imagine this is sort of seed, early round that you\u2019re getting involved in. Some of it might be a little later, but this is probably more early-stage investing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>WAYNE STOCKS:<\/strong> Yes. That\u2019s quite correct. And that\u2019s why we\u2019ve coined a platform because our Seed Fund \u2013 and our Fund\u00a0II now that we\u2019re investing in and actively deploying out \u2013 the idea of the seed fund is really to get it at early seed stage. So the definition of pre-seed and seed in South Africa is slightly looser and more informal than that in America, but it is certainly pre-revenue.<\/p>\n<p>What we want to do \u2013 the technology being de-risked to a point where it\u2019s been proved at a pilot stage or out of the lab, and we\u2019ll get involved at that early stage.<\/p>\n<p>Read:<br \/>Graduated, now what?<br \/>R300m seed fund launched to help start-ups<br \/>Crypto startups raised more VC money in midst of market slowdown<\/p>\n<p>And then our Fund II is when the companies have reached a product market fit, they\u2019ve generated some revenue, and we can then see that there\u2019s a demand from a customer source and we\u2019ll then put bigger checks in at a Fund II level. And that\u2019s looking at Seed Series A, Series B stage there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>SIMON BROWN:<\/strong> We\u2019ll leave it there. That\u2019s Wayne Stocks, with Stocks &amp; Strauss investing into IP coming out of universities. New and novel. I\u2019ve seen it in some of the offshore universities, but it\u2019s new for South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>Wayne, appreciate the early morning time.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>#Turning #university #research #real #impactful #businesses<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here. SIMON BROWN: I\u2019m chatting now with Wayne Stocks from Stocks &amp; Strauss. Wayne, appreciate the early morning time. Your University&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9694,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[1461,11630,62,195,2668,11185],"class_list":["post-9693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investing","tag-businesses","tag-impactful","tag-real","tag-research","tag-turning","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}