Ben-Gurion University of the Negev ranked first in Israel and third among universities outside the US for the relative likelihood that one of its graduates who establishes a venture-backed startup will go on to found a unicorn company, according to a new Stanford-led analysis.
The analysis by Stanford Graduate School of Business Prof. Ilya Strebulaev and its Venture Capital Initiative examined the universities attended by 3,497 founders of US unicorns and compared them with 2,716 founders selected from a random sample of venture-capital-backed startups.
Six Israeli universities appeared among the 18 highest-ranked institutions outside the US, more than any other country. Ben-Gurion University recorded an odds ratio of 6.6, followed among Israeli institutions by Reichman University, the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
What the ranking measures
The odds ratio measures how strongly a university is represented among unicorn founders relative to its representation among the comparison group of venture-backed founders.
A result above 1 indicates that graduates of the institution are overrepresented among unicorn founders. The calculation helps distinguish universities that produce a large overall number of startup founders from institutions whose graduates show an unusually high rate of reaching unicorn status.
The metric shows an association between a founder’s academic background and the success of a venture-backed company. It does not establish that attending a particular institution caused the company to reach a valuation of more than $1 billion.
Tsinghua University in China led the non-US ranking with an odds ratio of 13.2, followed by the INSEAD business school in France and Singapore with 9.3. Ben-Gurion University placed third with 6.6.
The University of Cambridge recorded an odds ratio of 2.3, while the University of Oxford received 1.7.
Six Israeli institutions in top 18
Reichman University placed second among the Israeli institutions with an odds ratio of 5.4, followed by the Technion with 3.1, Bar-Ilan University with 2.9, Tel Aviv University with 2.8 and the Hebrew University with 2.2.
India had five institutions in the top 18, while Canada had three and the United Kingdom had two.
The results differed from rankings based on the total number of unicorn founders. Tel Aviv University led all institutions outside the US by raw numbers, with 54 founders connected to 39 unicorn companies, according to Strebulaev’s analysis.
Ben-Gurion University attributed its high odds-ratio result in part to the entrepreneurship infrastructure developed at its Beersheba campus.
Building an entrepreneurship ecosystem in Beersheba
The university’s Yazamut 360 entrepreneurship center has operated for nine years and serves more than 5,000 students from across its faculties annually, according to the university.
The center offers courses, mentoring, startup communities, hackathons and practical programs intended to help students identify opportunities, build teams and develop business ventures.
It also houses Cactus Capital, a student-run venture-capital fund through which students receive training in startup analysis and participate in investment decisions involving early-stage ventures.
BGN, the university’s technology-transfer company, works with researchers and students to commercialize academic research, establish research-based startups and develop partnerships with industry.
“The unique ecosystem we’ve built in Beersheba nurtures bold entrepreneurs and technology leaders with global impact,” Ben-Gurion University President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz said.
Chamovitz said the result reflected the “ambition, creativity and entrepreneurial spirit” of the university’s students and graduates.
Dana Gvish, director of Yazamut 360, said the ranking primarily represented the achievements of the university’s graduates.
“At Entrepreneurship Center 360, we give students the tools to identify opportunities, solve problems, lead people and turn ideas into reality,” she said. “When these are the skills developed along the way, it’s no surprise that our graduates lead innovation and found groundbreaking companies in Israel and around the world.”
Josh Peleg, CEO of BGN, said the university encouraged researchers and students to turn academic research into companies and technologies capable of addressing commercial and social challenges.
```