Which is the best Uni for spin outs? Probably not where you are thinking 🎓🎓

AI research and polling | Downing Street photographer | Future guests

At Jimmy’s Jobs, we are working on a major project on AI to precede the AI Summit at Bletchley Park on November 1st.

It will a significant poll about what the British public thinks of the potential impact on jobs and the safety implications to precede the landmark summit being hosted by Rishi Sunak.

It will turn into an annual report, benchmarking attitudes towards AI.

We will be creating a report, podcast and YouTube video around the report.

There are opportunities to partner available - please get in touch if you want to discuss.

Please see below for our major release this week on ’Coal to Code how the North East redesigned its economy’:

If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.

🎓 Universities, entrepreneurship and spin outs

Whenever I visit a university now, I am struck by the amount of enterprise there is on campus from the students, from venture capital to entrepreneurship societies. I think it is partly down to the unintended consequences of increasing tuition fees.

Similarly there is a change of aspirations for modern day graduates. At the turn of this century, the most ambitious graduates went into investment banking, then came the crash and there was a distinct shift to consulting firms in the 2010s.

Now many university top graduates want to be more entrepreneurial earlier in their career (although many opt to get a blue chip on the CV first, or should that read blue tick in the modern era - maybe that will be the title of my first book from blue chip to blue tick!).

Many are looking at how universities can help them in their entrepreneurial journey. Universities are becoming a more and more important part of the UK entrepreneurial ecosystem, so I am always interested to read Octopus Ventures report on spin outs and which higher education institutions are adapting to this

The top two universities were Dundee and Queen’s in Belfast, probably not two universities that you would have picked out early. Cambridge came in at third. Six out of the top 10 actually come from outside of the Golden Triangle.

The methodology used by Octopus includes; disclosures, patents, spin-outs created, and subsequent financial transactions associated with exits.

Partly why Dundee tops the list is because the pharma company Exscientia is listed the US NASDAQ and IPO’d at £2.2 billion. 🤯🤯

You can check out the report from Octopus here, Dame Nancy Rothwell, VC of the University of Manchester, and probably the smartest VC I encountered at No.10 makes some interesting points in how universities are being judged changing.

See where your Alma mata comes - full listings of the best spin out universities are Gateways to Growth: The Entrepreneurial Impact Report for 2023.

I should say, the Octopus Group are a long term partner of Jimmy’s Jobs, the podcast in the early days would not have been possible without them.

🎓 Future guest

As students prepare to go back to University, we will be interviewing Joe Black on the podcast, the founder of UniTaskr which places students into work, it is used by over 300,000 people.

How I wish that had existed when I was at University …

📸 The Job of a Downing Street photographer

This interview has had a terrific response on socials, so we have made an extended highlights clip where he talks about his favourite photos of working at the top of British politics over the last decade.

✍️ This notebook is not possible without …

It is the most common question I get asked on when I tell people that I am a podcaster is, ‘how do you make money?’.

Well it is possible thanks to our various partners.

If you want to reach some of the UK’s most influential people, whether they be FTSE CEOs, the UK’s fastest growing entrepreneurs, editors of national newspapers and or Cabinet Ministers… including now several former Chancellors.

You can see some of the different projects we have worked on in the past, at our partnerships here.