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UC Berkeley is No. 1 public school for startup founders in 2022 Pitchbook rankings

By Ivan Natividad

Man wearing a black shirt with his back to the camera.
The program will give European-focused companies access to Berkeley’s network and entrepreneurship ecosystem. (Credit: Brittany Hosea-Small)
Man wearing a black shirt with his back to the camera.

Pitchbook, a data provider for private and public equity markets, ranks the top undergraduate programs for startup founders. (UC Berkeley photo)

For the fourth 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 2022 annual rankings of universities released Monday (Oct. 31).

“That Berkeley is right at the top of the world’s universities for funded startups again will not be a surprise to many,” said Berkeley Chief Innovation and Entrepreneurship Officer Rich Lyons . “We have the geography, we have the culture, we have the width, breadth and scale. How the campus ecosystem has developed over the last 20 years tells our story .”

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, 2012, and Oct. 31, 2022. Previously, the list captured all founders dating back to 2006.

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 1,427 undergraduate founders, followed by Berkeley (1,408), Harvard University (1,184), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1,065) and the University of Pennsylvania (1,038). Rounding out the Top 10 was Cornell University; Tel Aviv University; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Texas and Yale University.

Pitchbook expanded its rankings list from the Top 50 to the Top 100 this year, and while Berkeley was the only school in the UC system to crack the Top 10, other UC campuses made the Top 100: UCLA (11), UC San Diego (28), UC Santa Barbara (43), UC Davis (51), UC Irvine (74) and UC Santa Cruz (100).

Pitchbook also ranked Berkeley third in undergraduate programs for female founders, sixth in graduate programs for female founders, and fifth overall in graduate programs.