The top universities for producing startup founders, ranked by the number of undergraduate alumni who have raised venture capital in the last decade:
This ranking is not only about universities producing better founders. It is also a map of proximity to capital. The universities at the top are not just educational institutions. They are access networks: alumni capital, VC relationships, warm introductions, founder culture, and geographic closeness to LP/GP ecosystems. So the number of venture-backed founders reflects not only talent creation, but also capital access. In many cases, the system does not simply find the best founders. It finds the founders closest to the capital network.
Do you also have the data for dollars raised and dollars exited per university? Would be interesting
How about factoring this ranking by the number of alumni in total? And annual or recent graduates? Then you will have much stronger correlations and metrics for the innovation creator schools. For example, the annual graduates and alumni base of the University of Michigan is massive. I bet there may be smaller state and private universities who would stand out and even jump into the top 10 and 25 -- perhaps WPI, Worcester Polytechnic University (MA) or Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ) -- just guesses, as I did not attend either, only listed because I have been impressed with their graduates. Basically, I suggest time to sift the data better before drawing global conclusions.
Go Bears!
go bears! 🐻
go bears!
I would love to see the data by OUTCOME (a complex, but perhaps more telling analysis). It would also be nice to see rate of change . . . .
I'd like to think the University of Pennsylvania clinching fourth on this list is in part to what we've built and continue to build with Venture Lab
Go Bears!!!!