Most startup founders weren’t born being business-savvy professionals. Those skills are often nurtured during college. And a new list published Monday that ranks the higher-ed programs producing the most VC-backed startup founders includes a Wisconsin institution.
Of the 50 undergraduate programs included on the list, published by startup data firm PitchBook, the University of Wisconsin-Madison ranked No. 15.
The list only includes founders of startups that raised their round of venture capital funding between Jan. 1, 2006 and Aug. 31, 2019.
The data shows that UW-Madison has produced 495 founders across 440 companies, cumulatively raising more than $6 billion. The college has produced grads such as Greg Piefer, the founder and CEO of SHINE Medical Technologies, and Andy Konwinski, the co-founder and vice president of product at data pipeline platform Databricks.
Stanford University took the No. 1 spot on the list, with 1,114 companies raising $37 billion. It was followed by the University of California, Berkeley (2), MIT (3) and Harvard University (4).
Other Midwest colleges that made the list include the University of Michigan (7), the University of Illinois (10), Duke University (20), Northwestern University (31), Purdue University (37), Indiana University (41), the University of Minnesota (47) and Ohio State University (50).
PitchBook also ranked the top 25 undergraduate programs that have produced the most female founded or co-founded startups. UW-Madison came in at No. 21, with 46 female founders across 44 startups, raising more than $280 million.
