The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ranks among the top 10 schools in the world in producing venture capital backed entrepreneurs, according to the global VC capital firm PitchBook. The survey lists those entrepreneurs by the school they received their undergraduate degree.
According to the survey, Illinois ranks 9th in the United States and 10th in the world in producing VC-backed entrepreneurs with 239. Stanford tops that list followed by California-Berkeley, MIT, Harvard, Penn, Cornell, Michigan, Texas, and Tel Aviv University. Illinois ranks behind only Michigan (7) among Big Ten schools with Wisconsin (16), Maryland (24), Northwestern (28), Purdue (36), Penn State (38), Ohio State (43), Minnesota (46) and Indiana (49) also making the list.
The University’s alumni are ninth in terms of VC-backed companies (217) and 7th in capital raised ($2.06 billion). Illinois’ No. 10 overall rank is up from 12th in 2014.
PitchBook surmises in its report, “There’s a fairly strong case to be made that often it’s not even the degree you graduate with but the personal connections you make in your time at school that determine your future. It’s to be expected that top-notch schools lend themselves to the types of ambitious, inspired innovators who start plenty of companies and rake in plenty of venture capital. Yet that just goes to show just how valuable the networks created by those types of people while they are at school.”
Especially in this century, Illinois has developed an entrepreneurship ecosystem that is preparing students to create successful startups; much of that effort began with the development of the Technology Entrepreneur Center in 2000.
“We work with a lot of students and faculty in developing and vetting businesses around technology such that they can prove out the concept and do so using resources that are available here (grants, non-dilutive capital),” said Andy Singer, the director of the TEC since 2005. “When they get to a point when they need venture capital, they have a track record and perhaps some customers to have a better chance of getting decent terms from a VC.”