Visiting Warsaw University of Technology Investment Factory’s (WUT IF) office has the feel of attending a professor’s office hours rather than a business meeting: the VC is headquartered in a room in a long corridor of one of WUT’s buildings (on the aptly named Dean’s Street). But it’s here where, the investors hope, academic research will turn into money-making ventures.
WUT IF, which launched in January, is hoping to be Poland’s first-ever VC founded and supported by a technical university — though it hasn’t yet raised any of the $5m it’s hoping to from external LPs. It will back academic deeptech founders with small tickets, and, above all, it will provide them with vast technical expertise and access to numerous research teams within the university — something that WUT IF’s team say has been missing from the national venture market.
“VCs in Poland usually don’t have experts who can assess technology in very concrete, narrow areas,” says Robert Sitnik, the VC’s general partner. “We want to take advantage of WUT’s expertise and academic base [to do that].”
Full story: Poland’s best engineering school has a new VC to back deeptech startups | Sifted
