Top Business Schools For Startups

Columbia Business School - Ethan Baron photo

Columbia Business School – Ethan Baron photo

COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL STEALTHS WAY UP LIST

But this year’s ranking certainly isn’t entirely about the two B-school entrepreneurial heavyweights. This year Columbia Business School zoomed up the list to third, with seven ventures in the Top 100. Those companies combined for $201.75 million in funding. MIT’s Sloan School of Management, meantime, fell from 10 ventures on last year’s list to six this year. Pennsylvania’s Wharton School held steady with five startups again on this year’s list.

New York University’s Stern School of Business rose from one venture on the list last year to four this year. Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management also had four startups represented. The University of Texas McCombs School of Business, UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and INSEAD all claimed three ventures on the list to tie for the next spot.

Vince Ponzo, the senior director at Columbia’s Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center, says he’s beginning to see more business students form teams with students from other departments and schools on campus. The result, Ponzo believes, is a more innovative unique approach to launching startups and fewer “copy cat” ventures.

“We’re seeing fewer of the Uber’s for X or the umpteenth dating app or the 52nd food delivery company,” Ponzo says. Instead, many of the concepts and companies coming out of business school are far more sophisticated. Ponzo says the growing transparency of an industry’s production processes has allowed entrepreneurial business students to figure out where to cut out steps, make products more efficiently, quickly or at a better value. “It’s really hard these days, if you’re a middle-man to hide anywhere. Any ambitious student with an internet connection and some time can dissect what the production process is and circumvent those middlemen.”

The Top 100 MBA Startups of 2016:

Poets&Quants’ 2016 Top 100 MBA Startups

The Investors Behind The Top MBA Startups

The Top Business Schools For MBA Startups

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