Campus & community, Campus news

UC Berkeley No. 1 public school for startup founders in Pitchbook rankings

By Ivan Natividad

For the third straight year, UC Berkeley topped the list as the nation’s best public university for startup founders, and it remains the second-best university among both private and public schools, according to Pitchbook’s 2021 annual rankings of universities released today (Nov. 17).

“Berkeley is on fire, in terms of entrepreneurship,” said Berkeley Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer Rich Lyons. “These rankings validate not just our strength, but also our advances relative to other great universities. It’s in keeping with all the excitement Berkeley startups bring to their respective fields.”

Pitchbook, a data provider for private and public equity markets, ranks the top undergraduate programs for startup founders based on the number of founders whose companies received a first round of venture funding between Jan. 1, 2006, and Oct. 31, 2021. Founders included in the data received their undergraduate or master’s degrees from the universities included on the list.

As it did last year, Stanford University claimed the top spot among private and public universities with 1,643 founders, followed by Berkeley (1,548), Harvard University (1,275), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1,250) and the University of Pennsylvania (1,142). Rounding out the top 10 was Cornell University, University of Michigan, Tel Aviv University, University of Texas and Yale University.

While Berkeley was the only school in the UC system to crack the top 10, other UC campuses made the top 50, such as UCLA (14), UC San Diego (28), UC Santa Barbara (41) and UC Davis (45).

Pitchbook also ranked Berkeley 3rd in undergraduate programs for female founders and 9th in master’s in business administration programs.