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Universities are often referred to as a hotbed for startup founders as talent is highly concentrated within college students and their professors. Yet, many startups are generated by college dropouts and students who left their university early, suggesting that the relationship between universities and startups is much more sophisticated. Therefore, in this paper we aim to analyze the impact of universities on startup ecosystems and the influence of university education and tech-transfer on successful entrepreneurship.The main source of information utilized is the PitchBook ranking of the top 100 colleges ranked by startup founders. For further qualitative analysis, our research data includes semi-structured interviews with professors and key personnel from 15 selected universities in the ranking. These interviews were designed to explore the universities’ strategic focus, tech-transfer model, talent management programmes and the characteristics of their own accelerator. The underlying data for our quantitative research is the European startup database of Dealroom.co containing more than 19,000 startups which have their headquarters in Europe. Our primary findings are that the most successful universities in startup founders have their own models for nurturing talent and assisting students in opening their startups. Furthermore, our research suggests that there are huge regional differences in the complexity and success rate of these startup programmes, particularly between European countries.From a policy perspective, our research suggests that talent programs and incubators operated by universities can serve as focal points in developing a country’s startup ecosystem.
