21SEP

Loughborough builds its own alumni pipe

1 min read

16:52UTC

Loughborough University launched an investor network with the venture firm Haatch, pointing alumni money at its own spinouts at pre-seed and seed.

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Key takeaway

Loughborough is building its own first-cheque channel from alumni rather than waiting for venture funds.

Loughborough University launched an investor network with the venture firm Haatch on 24 August, connecting its spinouts to alumni money at pre-seed and seed, with BidScript, Moti Me and Adclear AI already in the ecosystem ¹. Haatch partner Jonathan Keeling names the problem plainly: "the hardest money to raise is the first cheque".

He is describing a specific failure rather than a general shortage. A university spinout at pre-seed has intellectual property, two or three founders and no revenue, which gives an outside investor almost nothing to underwrite except the Science and the team. Alumni carry information nobody else has: they know the department, often the supervisor, and sometimes the research itself. Turning that into a structured network rather than a chain of introductions is what converts goodwill into a priced round.

Spinout deals fell 33% by count last year , and a university that builds its own alumni pipeline is not waiting for that to reverse. Loughborough is not a Golden Triangle institution and does not attract the standing venture attention that Oxford, Cambridge and London do, which is precisely why owning the first-cheque layer matters more there than it would in Cambridge.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Loughborough University has teamed up with venture capital firm Haatch to launch an investor network connecting the university's spinout companies, businesses started by university researchers or graduates, with money from the university's own alumni. Three companies are already part of this new network: BidScript, Moti Me and Adclear AI. Haatch partner Jonathan Keeling explained the reasoning simply: 'the hardest money to raise is the first cheque.' By building its own pipeline of alumni investors, Loughborough does not have to wait for outside investors to become more willing to write that first, hardest cheque for a spinout with no track record yet.

What could happen next?

Opportunity
Loughborough spinouts gain a dedicated alumni investor pipeline for pre-seed and seed funding, the stage founders find hardest to close.

Sources:UKTN

Mentions:Loughborough University →London →Cambridge →

First Reported In

Update #14 · UKRI's sponsor department no longer exists

UKTN· 24 Aug 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Spinout deals fall 33% as seed dries up

Spinout deals falling 33% by count last year is the gap Loughborough's alumni investor network is built to address.

Occurred 1 Jul 2026

Read story →

This Event

Loughborough builds its own alumni pipe

Universities that build their own first-cheque channel stop waiting for a national spinout market that shrank by a third last year.

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