Innovation

Which Universities Produce the Most Startup Founders?

Published

2 weeks ago

September 25, 2024

Kayla Zhu

Graphics/Design:

Sabrina Lam

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Top Universities by Number of Startup Founders

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Starting a successful startup requires a great idea and a huge amount of resilience, but attending the right university—one with a strong reputation, world-class education, and influential connections—can give aspiring founders a crucial advantage.

This graphic visualizes the top 10 undergraduate and graduate schools ranked by the number of alumni who have founded their own startups.

Every year, PitchBook ranks universities across the world by the number of alumni entrepreneurs who have raised venture capital in the last decade, by undergraduate, graduate, and MBA programs.

Only founders whose companies received a round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2013, and Aug. 1, 2024 were counted, with the data updated as of August 30, 2024. Founders can attend multiple schools and may be counted towards multiple universities.

Stanford University is a Hotspot for Entrepreneurs

Below, we show the top 10 undergraduate schools by number of alumni founders.

Rank	University	Number of founders	Country	Status
1	University of California, Berkeley	1,811	🇺🇸 United States	Public
2	Stanford University	1,547	🇺🇸 United States	Private
3	Harvard University	1,352	🇺🇸 United States	Private
4	University of Pennsylvania	1,197	🇺🇸 United States	Private
5	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	1,175	🇺🇸 United States	Private
6	Cornell University	933	🇺🇸 United States	Private
7	Tel Aviv University	893	🇮🇱 Israel	Public
8	University of Michigan	860	🇺🇸 United States	Public
9	University of Texas	842	🇺🇸 United States	Public
10	University of Illinois	739	🇺🇸 United States	Public

This table shows the top 10 graduate schools by number of founders.

Rank	University	Number of founders	Country	Status
1	Stanford University	4,214	🇺🇸 United States	Private
2	Harvard University	3,716	🇺🇸 United States	Private
3	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)	2,834	🇺🇸 United States	Private
4	Columbia University	1,885	🇺🇸 United States	Private
5	University of California, Berkeley	1,804	🇺🇸 United States	Public
6	University of Pennsylvania	1,740	🇺🇸 United States	Private
7	University of Cambridge	1,391	🇬🇧United Kingdom	Public
8	University of Oxford	1,307	🇬🇧 United Kingdom	Public
9	Northwestern University	1,286	🇺🇸 United States	Private
10	New York University	1,063	🇺🇸 United States	Private

Located in the heart of the Silicon Valley, Stanford University boasts an impressive track record of producing thousands of startup founders over the past 10 years.

It ranks first in the graduate category, with over 4,000 founders having attended one of its graduate programs—the highest number across all three categories—and second in the undergraduate category.

Notable founders from Stanford include OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who dropped out of school, and Robinhood co-founder Vladimir Tenev.

UC Berkeley ranked first overall in the undergraduate category, and was the top-ranked public school in the graduate category, coming in at fifth. DoorDash’s founder and CEO Tony Xu and supply chain management company Flexport founder and CEO Ryan Petersen went to undergrad at Berkeley.

Both Stanford and UC Berkeley are located in or near the San Francisco Bay Area, which was ranked as the best startup city in the world by PitchBook.

Among PitchBook’s top 10 undergrad and graduate schools, only three non-American schools make the cut: Israel’s Tel Aviv University, and UK-based University of Cambridge and University of Oxford.