Tech Entreprenuership Ranking

[Sam_Lee]

<p>[Is</a> your school underrated for tech entrepreneurship? | PandoDaily](<a href=“http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/28/is-your-school-underrated-for-tech-entrepreneurship/]Is”>http://pandodaily.com/2013/09/28/is-your-school-underrated-for-tech-entrepreneurship/)

The first step was to grab the CrunchBase API data, which lists thousands of data points for funding received by founders of companies. We cleaned it up and distilled a list of all the colleges and universities in the US* with at least 15 alumni, who have founded a startup that has gone on to receive investment. (We combined undergrad and grad programs under the same school umbrella.)</p>

<p>We included the “at least 15 alumni” stipulation, because we wanted to make sure schools didn’t appear as a fluke. We included the “investment raised” stipulation to give ourselves a scoreboard. Fundraising also conveniently gives us a referee for what ‘counts’ as a startup or not. It’s relatively easy to launch a startup, but it’s not easy to convince someone to invest in you.</p>

<p>Next we studied the startups. For each, we summed up total outside funding to date they’d received and then divided it by number of company founders, thus obtaining capital per founder (CPF). We determined the median CPF for each school.

</p>

<ol>
<li>Northwestern</li>
<li>Maryland</li>
<li>Princeton</li>
<li>Stanford</li>
<li>UChicago</li>
<li>Dartmouth</li>
<li>Michigan</li>
<li>Harvard</li>
<li>Georgetown</li>
<li>Illinois</li>
<li>Cornell</li>
<li>Yale</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon</li>
<li>Penn</li>
<li>U. of Washington</li>
<li>MIT</li>
<li>UT Austin</li>
<li>Columbia</li>
<li>Berkeley</li>
<li>Duke</li>
<li>UCSD</li>
<li>USC</li>
<li>NYU</li>
<li>UCLA</li>
<li>Babson</li>
<li>Syracuse</li>
<li>Brown</li>
</ol>

[goldenboy8784]

<p>Sam, this ranking is extremely misleading since it basically skews in favor of schools that have a majority of large investments as long as they meet a minimum threshold of 15 founders. MIT’s 106 founders is a lot more impressive than Maryland’s 18 even if UMD helped co-found Google and MIT did not.</p>

<p>Given their lack of M7 business schools/business schools altogether, and small student body sizes relative to the large public schools, the Ivy League schools still reign supreme. Brown, Princeton, and Dartmouth are especially impressive.</p>

<p>I’m not surprised that the author is a Michigan alum who basically tried to spin data to make U of M look good without making it seem to obvious. Developing an inferiority complex to the Ivy League seems to be a prerequisite to earning a Michigan degree!</p>

[RML]

<p>^ </p>

<p>You’re too old school, goldenboy. There isn’t an M7 anymore. Even your bible, USNews&WR is saying so.</p>

[Sam_Lee]

<p>

Given their lack of M7 business schools/business schools altogether, and small student body sizes relative to the large public schools, the Ivy League schools still reign supreme. Brown, Princeton, and Dartmouth are especially impressive.

Harvard, Penn, and Dartmouth have top business schools and the business schools at Yale and Cornell are pretty decent. </p>

<p>Regardless, none of the people mentioned in the article was a business major or MBA grad anyway. When it comes to tech entrepreneurs, engineers are the most represented.</p>

[Sam_Lee]

<p>I am not sure if Northwestern is as good as this ranking suggests. I can understand many people are surprised, as the article mentioned. But Northwestern does have one of the most design-oriented engineering curriculum in the nation. All freshmen are required to design products for real clients. Here’s one example:
[Student-Designed</a> Maze Helps Keep Shedd Aquarium?s Otters Challenged | News | McCormick School of Engineering | Northwestern University](<a href=“Student-Designed Maze Helps Keep Shedd Aquarium’s Otters Challenged | News | Northwestern Engineering”>Student-Designed Maze Helps Keep Shedd Aquarium’s Otters Challenged | News | Northwestern Engineering)</p>

<p>It’s no coincidence that Design for America was founded there. Students and alums have been doing very well in various design and business plan competition across the nation. </p>

<p>Here are few recent examples:
[SwipeSense:</a> Getting Hospital Staff to Wash Hands - WSJ.com<a href=“has%20been%20selected%20as%20one%20of%20three%20finalists%20in%20The%20Wall%20Street%20Journal’s%20“WSJ%20Startup%20of%20the%20Year%22”>/url</a></p>

<p>[url=&lt;a href=“Young Northwestern Alumna Wins Startup Competition, Praise from Warren Buffett | News | Northwestern Engineering”&gt;Young Northwestern Alumna Wins Startup Competition, Praise from Warren Buffett | News | Northwestern Engineering]Young</a> Northwestern Alumna Wins Startup Competition, Praise from Warren Buffett | News | McCormick School of Engineering | Northwestern University](<a href=“http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303643304579109790293734458]SwipeSense:”>SwipeSense: Getting Hospital Staff to Wash Hands - WSJ)</p>

<p>[url=&lt;a href=“http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/news/articles/2013/04/Northwestern-teams-sinode-briteseed-win-rice-business-plan-competition.html]Northwestern”&gt;Northwestern Teams Win More Than $1 Million in Rice Business Plan Competition | News | Northwestern Engineering]Northwestern</a> Teams Win More Than $1 Million in Rice Business Plan Competition | News | McCormick School of Engineering | Northwestern University<a href=“Teams%20from%20NU%20dominated%20the%20competition%20the%20year%20before%20also”>/url</a></p>