[Feature: Prospects for University-Launched Startups] Nobuaki Shindo: Keio's Vision for Supporting University-Launched Startups

There are two main reasons why fostering startups is important for Keio University. The first is the changing social expectations for universities. While the traditional mission of a university has been education and research, in recent years, there has been a demand to contribute to society by linking these results to solving social issues and creating innovation. The second is to cultivate "leaders of the whole of society," which is The Mission of Keio University. Exercising an entrepreneurial spirit, overcoming difficulties, and pioneering new fields has been a tradition since the founding of Keio University. By inheriting this tradition and fostering startups, we will produce individuals with pioneering leadership.

Our university is a comprehensive university consisting of 10 distinctive undergraduate faculties, 14 graduate schools, and 30 Research Centers and Institutes, and many startups based on a wide range of education and research results are being born. In the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's "FY2022 Survey on University-Launched Ventures" (announced in May 2023), the number of venture companies from our university increased to 236 (from 175 the previous year), ranking first in the country in terms of the number of increases and third in total number (up from fifth the previous year). Furthermore, in "Japan Startup Finance 2023" published by Uzabase, Inc. (announced in January 2024), our university ranked first in terms of funding amount by university for university-launched startups (approximately 51 billion yen).

Behind this rapid progress are the cultivation of entrepreneurial spirit through various entrepreneurship education programs conducted by each faculty and graduate school, startup support by the newly established Startup Division within the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the university headquarters and the university venture capital firm Keio Innovation Initiative (KII), and our university's unique cooperative support system (university ecosystem) based on the spirit of Keio Gijuku Shachu cooperation. Based on these, I would like to introduce our university's efforts to foster startups.

While various entrepreneurship education programs were being conducted at our university, in the past, there was no sufficient internal system for fostering startups, and we relied on the self-help efforts of internal entrepreneurs and researchers. In FY2021, the current executive management established the Startup Division within the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the headquarters organization responsible for the university's industry-academia collaboration functions. As of May 2024, this division has six full-time practitioner faculty members from industry (Startup Division | Keio University Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship). In collaboration with the Intellectual Property Division, Open Innovation Division, and Strategic Planning Office within the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we are promoting the industrialization of our university's research results and actively promoting support activities for fostering university-launched startups while advancing cooperation with Keio Innovation Initiative.

In the Startup Division, to enhance the content of entrepreneurship support, we conducted an entrepreneurship awareness survey last year targeting all faculty, staff, and students. As a result, we found that there is a very high need for support regarding "human resources," "funding," and "environment improvement," such as education to become an entrepreneur, entrepreneur community networks, providing community opportunities like accompaniment and brainstorming for starting a business, introduction of team members and external experts, support for obtaining funds for starting a business, and additionally, the development of internal rules and facilities for starting a business. Referring to these needs, the Startup Division is promoting entrepreneurship support within the university, focusing on two activities: (1) revitalizing the startup community, and (2) startup fostering support and internal environment development.

To revitalize our university's startup community, we are pursuing various initiatives. As an initial step, we have completely revamped the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship website (Keio Startup). Here, we provide various entrepreneurship content, such as various events and news related to starting a business, application methods for grants, subsidies, and acceleration programs, support activities undertaken by the Startup Division, and information on startups born from our university.

In addition, we are actively providing opportunities for cultivating entrepreneurial spirit and entrepreneurial activities for students, faculty, and staff by hosting, co-hosting, sponsoring, or participating in various acceleration programs and events held inside and outside the university (such as the Gukyo Jissen Entre Salon, Keio Healthcare Venture Contest, entrepreneurship support program 1stRound, Greater Tokyo Innovation Ecosystem (GTIE), medical startup fostering program Research Studio, and Mirai X).

Our university introduced the "Keio University Startup Community Program" in December 2022 with the aim of further promoting the social implementation of research and education results through the creation of university-launched startups.

This system is an initiative to systematically support the creation and growth of startups from our university, and the university proactively defines the companies to be supported (see the following URL for requirements: https://www.keio.ac.jp/en/research/startup-support/startup-system/).

The Startup Division acts as a hub to provide support measures related to people, goods, and money needed by entrepreneurs and startups through agreements with various partners. At the same time, we are utilizing this system to revitalize the community between the university and startup companies.

To enhance the support of this system, the Startup Division is deepening cooperation with and receiving support from various external stakeholders. I will introduce each initiative.

The Startup Division, in cooperation with various Mita-kai and Keio University alumni, provides support such as advice on formulating business plans and fundraising, mentoring, and company establishment when faculty, researchers, and students prepare to start or begin a business. The creation and growth of startups require multifaceted support, and we believe that being able to receive various support from Keio University alumni active in many fields is a great strength of our university.

In addition, donations from Keio University alumni to the university are allocated as internal entrepreneurship support activity expenses for the promotion of entrepreneurship and are used as the activity resources for various initiatives of the Startup Division. In this way, support from Keio University alumni and Mita-kai organizations contributes significantly to the development of our university's startup ecosystem.

The Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship is strengthening startup support in collaboration with corporate partners with the aim of strengthening the university-launched startup ecosystem and building a role model for promoting academia-originated innovation. Here are a few examples.

・Construction of the "Keio Version EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) Model" to match faculty and researchers who produce excellent research results with management professional talent who lead entrepreneurship (Agreement concluded with BizReach, Inc. in December 2022: Keio University and BizReach Conclude Partnership Agreement Aiming to Create World-Class Deep Tech Startups, Launching "Keio Version EIR (Entrepreneur in Residence) Model" | Topics | Keio Startup)

・Collaboration on spreading understanding of startups and entrepreneurship awareness among students, faculty, and staff, and considering high-quality and efficient startup support activities through data utilization (Agreement concluded with For Startups, Inc. in May 2023: For Startups and Keio University Conclude Agreement for Creating New Growth Industries through Social Implementation of Research and Education Results, Starting Collaboration Centered on Information Platform "STARTUP DB" | Topics | Keio Startup)

・Collaboration to accelerate the creation and growth of university-launched startups through the provision of computing resources to Keio University-related startups and the provision of technical and human resource support and information needed by startups and entrepreneurs (Agreement concluded with AWS Japan in September 2023: Keio University Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and AWS Japan Conclude Partnership Agreement to Accelerate Creation and Growth of University-Launched Startups — AWS Japan to Provide Multifaceted Support including Computing Resources, Technology, and Human Resources | Topics | Keio Startup)

Keio Innovation Initiative, Inc. was established in 2015 and manages venture capital funds totaling 35 billion yen, including investments from external financial institutions. In October 2023, as a third fund, we proceeded with the establishment of an impact investment fund that invests in projects where social impact can be identified, in collaboration with the university, aiming to pursue both the creation of social and environmental impact and financial returns.

Keio Innovation Initiative has invested in 46 startups (as of October 2023) that utilize the results of universities and research institutions, primarily our university. They are also working on company creation from university research seeds, with a rich track record of 8 cases of founding support and 12 cases of management and recruitment support, and results have already emerged, such as three portfolio companies being listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market. The Startup Division is advancing support for fostering startups born from our university in various forms while working closely with Keio Innovation Initiative.

To date, many deep tech startups in fields such as medical/health and digital technology have been born from our university, but it remains difficult for faculty and researchers with research seeds that contribute to social implementation to create business plans themselves, find customers, and negotiate with venture capital to proceed with entrepreneurship and fundraising. Therefore, the Startup Division has started activities to support faculty and researchers aiming to start a business by accompanying them through their individual challenges and needs. Sometimes, consultations on intellectual property strategy, technology transfer, separation of research in the laboratory and business, and obtaining funds including grants and subsidies also occur, so we are launching entrepreneurship consideration teams for each research seed, including members from the internal Intellectual Property Division and Keio Innovation Initiative. In addition, we have introduced a system to publicly recruit external professional management talent who will proceed with these entrepreneurship preparation activities as our university's Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIR) under the agreement with BizReach (mentioned above). We have established a comprehensive support system where individuals who can overcome the challenges until entrepreneurship and fundraising felt by faculty and researchers and who can participate in company management after starting a business join the team as partners.

In addition to the above, the Startup Division provides support for corporate establishment such as preparation for company registration, consultation on shareholder agreements, and opening corporate accounts, as well as customer interviews with business companies and CVCs, public relations support, recruitment support for management talent and experts (joint public recruitment), loan consultation and introduction to other venture capitals, introduction to various acceleration programs, and support for providing vendor preferential programs. We provide individualized support according to the needs of teams and individual companies for startup growth, in collaboration with agreement partners and Mita-kai members.

In addition, in October 2023, we launched the "Keio Startup Incubation Program (KSIP)," a university-wide incubation program that systematizes individualized accompaniment support, including the aforementioned Keio version EIR model. The goal of this program is to achieve the two goals of "entrepreneurship" and "fundraising." By making it a university-wide program at Keio, we also expect synergistic effects by forming an unprecedented community where research and entrepreneur teams, who tend to be isolated, can connect with each other, share knowledge, challenges, and success stories, and inspire one another. We plan to expand this KSIP community so that, in addition to the aforementioned EIRs, supporters such as Keio University alumni and Mita-kai who sympathize with the fostering of startups from our university can also participate.

Furthermore, in conjunction with this incubation program, we are currently preparing to establish a "Startup Support Fund" to supply resources for a new internal gap fund that can be flexibly used for research and verification toward commercialization and entrepreneurship preparation activities.

Our university does not currently have its own funding program for entrepreneurs and currently receives public grants and subsidies from JST, NEDO, etc. However, since agile utilization is difficult, we plan to promote entrepreneurship and commercialization from university seeds by establishing our university's own gap fund.

Our university has strong independence for each faculty, graduate school, and campus, and innovation and startup creation activities are progressing in each. However, there is a challenge that activities are dispersed, making information exchange and interaction difficult to progress. In addition, to respond to the fostering of innovation and startups born from the fusion of research areas in different fields and the further promotion of industry-academia-government-finance collaboration, we believe it is necessary to develop a more integrated physical community space.

At the Shinanomachi Campus (School of Medicine and University Hospital), social implementation activities through the creation of startups derived from our university's seeds born through basic and clinical research and education centered on medical sciences and life sciences, as well as joint research with companies, are being actively promoted. To further strengthen this characteristic of the Shinanomachi Campus, we are preparing to open a university-wide incubation facility (CRIK Shinanomachi / Center for Research and Incubation, Keio University; see the following URL for details: CRIK Shinanomachi | Keio University Shinanomachi Research & Incubation Center) with the functions necessary for startup support at the Shinanomachi Campus, aiming for an opening at the end of May 2024. At this facility, it will be possible to promote data-driven research and verification tests utilizing medical data, etc., and for startups to establish (register) their corporations and move in. We also plan to form a unique entrepreneur-centered community where they can receive various support leading to startup growth, such as support from the Startup Division, venture capital, and professionals.

In this way, by developing the "system" of KSIP and the new gap fund, and the "place" of CRIK Shinanomachi, we will accelerate the fostering of startups from our university.

I have introduced our university's current efforts to foster startups, and in the future, we would like to strengthen the following three activities.

Centering on the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we will proceed with the discovery of excellent research seeds within the university, the creation of strong intellectual property, the strengthening of intellectual property strategy and technology transfer activities, and efforts to overcome various challenges related to the entrepreneurship process (formulation of policies and regulations for intellectual property, conflict of interest, and technology transfer, as well as regulations for handling shares, etc., generated as license consideration). Through this, we will provide an environment where startups are easily born from our university and encourage the growth of startups that can compete globally.

We will promote cooperation with entrepreneurship education activities conducted at each campus and further strengthen the cooperation system related to startup fostering between the headquarters and campuses and between campuses themselves, working to continuously produce leaders such as entrepreneurs who tackle social issues from our university.

We will aim to promote further collaboration and cooperation between the university and various external stakeholders, including Keio University alumni, alumni organizations such as Mita-kai, entrepreneurs, supporters, and companies including partnership agreement partners, to revitalize the startup ecosystem surrounding Keio University.

Through these efforts, we will promote delivering the results of our university's education and research to society through startup fostering, and investing in the cultivation of leaders involved in next-generation education and research activities using the consideration for intellectual property rights from startup support and donations from supporters as resources. To continue contributing to society sustainably as a leader of society, Keio University intends to promote a cycle for solving social issues and investing in the future through the fostering of startups.