Where did most start-up founders study and research? A study by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), ETH Zurich and the University of Innsbruck shows a complete picture for Germany, Austria and Switzerland for the first time. In the past decade, most start-ups were founded by students, employees and alumni of TUM, ETH and the University of St. Gallen. If one looks at the number of start-ups in relation to the number of students, German private universities are the most successful. The sectors with the most start-ups are shaped by only a few universities.
Start-ups are considered an important factor for the success of a business location, and researchers and students are predestined to make new findings and technologies usable for the general public with companies. But which universities produce the most founders? Previous studies have been based on surveys on spin-offs in the narrower sense or comparatively generalized classifications. The Entrepreneurial Impact Study therefore investigated this question for the third time with an elaborate data analysis – for the first time for the entire DACH region, i.e. Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The researchers from TUM, ETH and the University of Innsbruck compiled around 51,000 start-ups that were founded in the three countries between 2014 and 2024 from several databases such as Startupdetector, Austrian Startup Monitor and Startupticker. They then used LinkedIn, the Dealroom and Crunchbase databases and company websites to record the universities at which the founders had studied and, if applicable, worked. They took into account the different educational and career stages and assigned the start-ups to the various institutions if these had made a substantial contribution to the founding teams’ careers.