The prestigious Stanford index states: Tel Aviv University is the best entrepreneurship incubator outside the US
A new study from Stanford University ranks Tel Aviv University first in Israel and first outside the US in the number of unicorns (private startups worth more than a billion dollars) founded by its graduates. According to the study, conducted by entrepreneurship researcher Prof. Ilya Strabolev from the Stanford School of Business Administration, the leading university in the world in the number of unicorns founded by its graduates is Stanford University in the USA. Tel Aviv University ranks second with 43 unicorns founded by its graduates. In third place is the British Oxford and in fourth place is the University of Waterloo in Canada.
The ranking is based on a database of 1,100 startups that have raised over a billion dollars from US venture capital funds and refers to absolute numbers of unicorns, without adjustment according to the size of the universities.
Integration of entrepreneurship studies in all fields of study
"Prof. Ilya Strabolev's research findings are further evidence that Tel Aviv University is the entrepreneurial university of the State of Israel, which grows more startups than any other university in Israel and unicorns in particular," says Prof. Moshe Tzviran, head of Tel Aviv University's entrepreneurship and innovation department and former dean of The Faculty of Management by Kohler. "We got to this place because we are home to the best students in a wide variety of fields and disciplines, and also because in recent years we have become a proactive university in the world of entrepreneurship and innovation. We no longer wait for the 'magic' to happen, but integrate the entrepreneurship studies divisions as part of the curriculum - also in the classic faculties such as computer science, engineering and management, but also in the humanities, social sciences, law and arts faculties. In fact, most of the students at the university today can study an entrepreneurship division as an integral part of the degree, and get the tools to found a startup that may later grow into a unicorn."
"We got to this place because we are home to the best students in a wide variety of fields and disciplines, and also because in recent years we have become a proactive university in the world of entrepreneurship and innovation."
The leading university in growing entrepreneurs outside the US
Prof. Strabolev's new index joins a long line of entrepreneurship rankings - in all of which Tel Aviv University is ranked as the leading university in growing entrepreneurs outside the US. Thus, for example, in 2022 Tel Aviv University was ranked by PitchBook ranked seventh in the world And in the first place outside the US in the number of graduate startups that have received investments from venture capital funds. The Startup Genome ranking also placed Tel Aviv University at the top of universities, and the first outside the United States, right after Stanford, MIT, Harvard and Berkeley.
"There are many rankings of entrepreneurship, and each index refers to other parameters," explains Prof. Tzviran, "but they all point to the fact that Tel Aviv University is the best incubator for entrepreneurship outside of the US." We made a strategic decision to turn Tel Aviv University into Israel's entrepreneurial university and act proactively to establish our technological and business advantage to create startups and unicorns. If the achievements so far have been achieved purely thanks to the quality of our faculty, students and study programs, then focused and directed activity of the entrepreneurship and innovation system at the university is expected to bring us to even more significant achievements."
