A new analysis from Crunchbase shows the top 20 colleges that produce the most CEOs of startups that have raised more than $1 million in the last year, and two Illinois institutions made the list.
Northwestern University came in at No. 8 with 31 graduates that are now CEO of a startup that raised $1 million or more since May 2017. Chicago startup NuMat Technologies, which just raised $14.4 million in April falls into that category as its CEO, Benjamin Hernandez, attended Northwestern. Additionally, Edovo raised $9.8 million and is led by Brian Hill who graduated from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management in 2015.
On the Crunchbase list, Northwestern beat out Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan, where notable Chicago entrepreneurs like Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, the co-founders of Uptake and Groupon, attended.
The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign also made the list at No. 13, producing 26 graduates who are now CEOs of startups.
Harvard University came in at No. 1 on the list, graduating 148 CEOs, with Stanford right behind it at 147.
Altogether, the 20 schools on the list graduated CEOs for more than 800 startups globally that have raised $1 million or more in the past year. The data showed that MBA programs, particularly from top-ranked schools, produced the most CEOs. Even though their classes are a small percentage of a college’s total student body, these institutions produce a disproportionately large share of CEOs.
For example, Wharton School of Business accounted for the majority of CEO alumni from the University of Pennsylvania. Harvard Business School graduated more than half of the Harvard-affiliated CEOs, and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management graduated nearly half.
