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Equity value of Oxford's Creative Destruction Lab startups smashes £1 billion mark, 46% higher than UK seed stage average

Published

Startups from the Oxford Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) programme have collectively created a record £1.3 billion in equity value.

According to an analysis of the UK market (Sifted), the median early-stage startup equity value is €5.5 million. CDL Oxford's pool of graduated startups has a median equity value of £9.7 million (for companies with observable valuation data as of May 2023). The figure also makes it the highest in equity value across all four European CDL programmes, and the first to break the £1 billion mark across its startup ecosystem.  

 

The Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) programme, based at Saïd Business School, supports science-based entrepreneurs for scalable companies in science and technology-based fields. CDL-Oxford operates five focus streams: Advanced Therapies, AI, Climate, Fintech and Space technologies, and was the programme's first site outside of Canada and the first in Europe. CDL operates across thirteen sites globally.  

 

Achieving £1.3 billion in equity value is a landmark event that we are immensely proud of at CDL-Oxford. It proves that our methodology of mentoring science-driven entrepreneurs works, allowing them to build massively scalable and impactful ventures.

Professor Thomas Hellmann

Site Lead Creative Destruction Lab

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Oxford Saïd’s DP World Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Professor Thomas Hellmann, site lead for CDL-Oxford, said: ‘Achieving £1.3 billion in equity value is a landmark event that we are immensely proud of at CDL-Oxford, and demonstrates the exceptional value our startups achieve at the early seed stage. It proves our methodology of mentoring science-driven entrepreneurs works, allowing them to build massively scalable and impactful ventures.’ 

CDL's success is using objective-based mentoring to avoid poor performance and judgement failure in markets, increasing the startup’s probability of success, and relying on expert entrepreneurial knowledge from accomplished mentors.  

During a CDL session, which takes place every eight weeks throughout the nine-month programme, ventures go through a ‘small group meetings’ process where venture founders are rigorously questioned about their companies, and then receive guidance to prioritise their business actions, including a bespoke set of short-term objectives crafted by experienced CDL mentors.  

Mentors also provide professional judgement based on their entrepreneurial experience and knowledge to prioritise actions. What sets the programme apart is its adoption of an ongoing Darwinian selection process, where Mentors drop at least one Venture at each Session. The approach focuses the CDL community resource on helping those science- and technology-based ventures that have the potential to massively scale their business. 

 

CDL puts you in a room with highly experienced investors, scientists and industry professionals who ask tough questions and pull the business apart to see how it works and try to spot issues or challenges.

Peter Mountney

CEO of Odin Visions

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Peter Mountney, CEO of Odin Visions, a company integrating AI into endoscopy to support procedures such as colonoscopy and gastroscopy, graduated from the Oxford-CDL AI stream in 2020. Explaining the rigorous experience, he said: 'CDL puts you in a room with highly experienced investors, scientists and industry professionals who ask tough questions and pull the business apart to see how it works and try to spot issues or challenges. We have been part of many accelerator/incubator programmes, but CDL is unique.'

Describing how the CDL contributed to their success, he added: ‘They were able to help us identify and focus on the critical factors that would determine the success or failure of the company and connect us with an incredible network of investors and advisors.’ The company was acquired by Olympus in 2022 for £66 million. 

 

This process of subjecting our ideas to rigorous scrutiny helped us to strengthen our business focus and delivery from an early stage and prepare for the challenges ahead.

Dr Danuta Jeziorska

Co-Founder of Nucleome Therapeutics

Validating the effectiveness of the Oxford -DL process, Dr Danuta Jeziorska, Co-Founder of Nucleome Therapeutics, a biotech that decodes the dark matter of the human genome, described how the Oxford-CDL experience has benefitted the company: “My main takeaway from the CDL programme was the invaluable experience of pressure-testing our strategy, narrative, and inflation points with a range of investors, experts and leading entrepreneurs. This process of subjecting our ideas to rigorous scrutiny helped us to strengthen our business focus and delivery from an early stage and prepare for the challenges ahead.” She also pointed to additional takeaways, such as choosing a team wisely, emphasising that the team, not only the technology, determines long-term success and failure. The company completed a series A round of funding, raising £37.5 million to advance its platform. Commenting on the news of CDL’s £1.3 billion milestone, Danuta commented, “To have reached the milestone in just four years of its founding echoes the mission of the organisation itself: to build something massive!”

Launched in Canada’s Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto by Professor Ajay Agrawal in 2012, CDL was created initially to address the problem of weak commercialisation of academic inventions persisting in Canada. The Oxford Saïd site leverages the deep knowledge and academic rigour of one of the world’s oldest and most respected universities, Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. Since its inception, CDL has mentored more than 7,900 founders and 2,900 ventures and raised more than $28 billion in equity value creation across its 13 locations in more than 20 streams globally.