Harvard, Wharton Startups Beat Stanford In VC Funding

DARTMOUTH TUCK, IE BUSINESS SCHOOL & HEC PARIS MAKE IMPRESSIVE SHOWINGS

Among the other surprises in the data was a strong showing by Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, which despite its smaller graduating classes, showed up 14th on the list for raising the most VC cash at $583 million. IE Business School in Spain and HEC Paris in France also made impressive showings, making the list of the top 25 MBA schools and outperforming many U.S. schools where VC money is more plentiful and available.

Harvard’s top five companies by capital raised were GrabTaxi, Oscar Health Insurance, Jet, Jumia Nigeria, and Blue Apron. Wharton’s top five were Harry’s Razor Company, Jet, Denali Therapeutics, Jand, and Grocery Delivery. Stanford’s top VC-funded companies were SoFi, Harry’s Razor Company, Jumei International, Cardlytics, and LendingHome.

Stanford leads the Pitchbook unicorn list of companies that are valued at $1 billion or more. Stanford MBA-founders lead 11 unicorns, raising $3.2 billion, while Harvard boasted 10 unicorns, having raised just under $3 billion. MIT Sloan and INSEAD were both tied at five MBA-founded companies each, with VC funding of $2.4 billion and $807 million, respectively. New York University’s Stern School came next with four and Wharton was sixth with three companies valued at $1 billion or more.

VC-BACKED COMPANIES FOUNDED BY FEMALE MBAS MADE THE DIFFERENCE FOR HARVARD & WHARTON

Perhaps the biggest surprise was how much money women from Harvard and Wharton pulled in from VC firms compared to Stanford (see table below). Women with MBAs at Harvard raised a whopping $1.2 billion, while those from Wharton gathered $437 million from VCs. At Stanford, the number was just $234 million, reinforcing the widespread notion that Silicon Valley is not nearly as hospitable an environment for women as it is for men. Wharton, moreover, beat Stanford even though women founded fewer VC-backed companies, 37 vs. 61 at Stanford.

After the big three, Columbia Business School alumnae came in fourth, raising $140 million. Not behind was INSEAD, with $139 million in total VC funding, and Northwestern Kellogg, with $134 million. MIT Sloan came in at $115 million and UC-Berkeley’s Haas School at $95 million raised by companies founded by female MBAs.

Pitchbook ranked the schools based on the number of MBA entrepreneurs from each company, which put the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business 25th on the list with 46 entrepreneurs at 36 startups that raised a total of $69 million. But MBAs from several other schools actually raised more cash. The IIM schools in India, for example, fared very well, with IIM-Ahmedabad MBA founders having raised $519 million, IIM-Bangalore at $212 million, and IIM-Calcutta at $203 million.

Oxford MBAs also did exceptionally well. The 31 startups founded by Oxford grads raised $252 million, while 17 MBA-founded startups from Essec picked up $231 million in VC money. University College Dublin came in at $164 million for 18 startups, and Technion’s 18 companies founded by MBAs had $140 million in funding.

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