Blackbird swoops in on universities’ deep tech turf with Foundry
Australian universities are great at research but have struggled to translate that brilliance into new startups. One of Australia's biggest VCs thinks it can help.
Blackbird is ramping up efforts to lure academics away from universities and turn them into entrepreneurs.
The venture capital firm is doubling the cohort size of Foundry — an initiative it has quietly run for the past two years — aiming to improve Australia’s poor track record of commercialising scientific research while also creating new investment opportunities along the way.
“For 50 years, we’ve done the same thing and got the same outcome,” Blackbird partner Michael Tolo said of universities’ approach to research commercialisation. ”We’re trying to bootstrap a new entrepreneurial culture within these research communities, founded in the belief that they can do something special.”
“The existing system does not empower and uplift them in that way.”
Australian universities produce world-class research, yet this has not translated into a pipeline of homegrown, deep tech success stories. Despite being ranked 10th globally for research quality, Australia sits 75th in the world for the diversity of its exports — behind Kazakhstan and Egypt.
