Tech Capital

Cliff Gross built his career at the intersection of innovation and commercialization. After founding biomechanics corp and U Tech, where he served as CEO and chairman, and leading a provincial venture fund in Canada, Gross identified a massive market inefficiency: universities worldwide were producing over 100,000 intellectual properties annually, yet most went unlicensed and underdeveloped. There was a million-unit inventory of university IP sitting idle, creating what Gross calls "a big chasm between University IP and creating marketable technology."

Tech Capital was incorporated in 2014, but before opening for business, Gross spent 18 months building the foundation: an electronic network capturing intellectual properties available for license from universities in 160 countries. "We built what we believe is the world's largest network of research universities. We have about 4,500 universities in our network online," he explains. The company enlisted 60 science advisors across different verticals to conduct due diligence on promising technologies, creating a scalable system for identifying high-potential IP.

Tech Capital launched with three complementary revenue streams. The "invention discovery" service helps companies identify promising university technologies relevant to their product lines, with assignments typically ranging from £10,000 to £50,000 and lasting about a month. The "invention evaluated" service assesses market potential of new inventions, delivering reports within 10 business days to around 250 universities and large companies. A third service—acquired through the purchase of Vortex Group a year prior—provides executive placement for technology transfer and commercialization experts. These services simultaneously generated revenue and kept the company tightly connected to university networks globally.

In the first half of 2017, Tech Capital generated £3.8 million in top-line revenue, with services contributing approximately £650,000. The real growth driver, however, was portfolio company appreciation. The company acquired rights to university discoveries using a forward revenue-sharing model—acquiring them for modest upfront costs and sharing a percentage of future success. A standout example was the acquisition of 13 optics patents from the University of Central Florida for augmented reality applications, with a typical royalty rate of about 5%. Another success was Laskier, a portfolio company of medical devices acquired from a leading medical device manufacturer that had performed "terrific" in just 18 months since inception. This diversified approach—combining service revenue with equity upside—proved far more effective than services alone.

By mid-2017, Tech Capital had grown to 15 full-time employees plus 60 part-time science advisors, with offices in Oxford, Miami, and Singapore. The company was self-sustaining: "We don't need capital at this point. Business is really flying," Gross stated. With seven portfolio companies maturing rapidly and a business that generated nearly £4 million in the first half of 2017, Tech Capital had cracked the code on university IP commercialization—turning a billion-dollar inventory of overlooked intellectual property into viable commercial ventures.