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01 · Founder DNA

Founder DNA.

A first look at how founder origin, education, mobility and alumni networks shape the next generation of breakout companies.

Founder DNA preview

Origin, education and alumni pathways

A first cut of the data modules behind Founder DNA: where unicorn founders come from, where they studied, and which organisations seed the next generation of startup founders.

30,254 founder education rows · 44,670 alumni-founder rows · 2,636 matched mobility records

University countries

United States10,084
United Kingdom2,155
India1,574
France1,387
Israel927
Germany884
Canada686
Sweden449

Mobility signals

21.4%
cross-border education
Founders with known origin who studied in a different country.
23,606
founders with university data
Education rows with a mapped institution.
13,233
founders with known origin
Input for origin and cross-border education cuts.

Immigrant founder share by startup location

Default view counts immigrant founders as a share of known-origin founder-startup records. Switch to startup level to see the share of startups with at least one immigrant founder.

Built from matched founder-origin and alumni-startup rows. A founder is counted as immigrant when their recorded origin differs from the startup country; Silicon Valley / Bay Area uses startup metro and city signals inside the US. Regional and world bars aggregate country rows shown and exclude the Bay Area metro to avoid double-counting the US.

Top universities

Stanford University757
Massachusetts Institute of Technology545
Harvard University458
Harvard Business School401
Stanford University Graduate School of Business358
Berkeley334
Tel Aviv University293

Alumni source companies

Alphabet | Google2,961
Microsoft2,792
Amazon1,132
Apple1,029
Meta862
Yahoo!815
Uber655

Founder startup destinations

United States · 25,796 United Kingdom · 2,959 India · 2,017 Germany · 1,677 France · 1,654 Israel · 1,341 Canada · 780 Singapore · 710

Where alumni founders build

Enterprise software · 6,907 Fintech · 4,980 Health · 3,616 Marketing · 2,146 Security · 1,780 Media · 1,353

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