Top Schools for Venture Capital

Schools whose networks lean venture capital

Venture Capital alumni profiles per 100 IB alumni profiles, among the 72 schools with at least 500 IB profiles. This measures the mix of a school’s alumni network. It does not measure how often its bankers move into venture capital roles.

• 1Stanford University29
• 2MIT24
• 3UC Santa Barbara23
• 4University of Colorado Boulder23
• 5Purdue University23
• 6UC Berkeley23
• 7Carnegie Mellon University22
• 8Arizona State University22
• 9University of Washington22
• 10UC San Diego21

The job, the firms, and the pay

Venture capital firms fund startups. Teams are much smaller than at banks or buyout funds, which is why the counts here are lower for every school. Representative firms: Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Kleiner Perkins, Benchmark, Lightspeed, Index Ventures.

Associates typically earn $150k to $250k all-in, below private equity at the junior level. Senior pay comes mostly from carried interest.

Pay figures are typical US ranges from public comp surveys, not from this dataset.

How we counted

Counts come from People Data Labs, which aggregates public professional profiles. For each school we counted people who list the school in their education and have held a job title containing the phrase “venture capital” at any point. The count includes undergraduate and graduate alumni and covers roles at any firm worldwide. Titles that skip the phrase (an “Analyst” at a venture capital firm, for example) are not counted, so treat these as a consistent comparison between schools rather than a census. Data pulled 2026-07-30.

The size-adjusted view uses fall 2023 total undergraduate enrollment from the NCES IPEDS Fall Enrollment dataset. It divides the all-time profile count by a current enrollment headcount and reports the result per 1,000 undergraduates. Use it as a school-size comparison. It does not measure placement for a graduating class.