Bullish on Bears

Cal has the axe yet again after, as the Mercury News so kindly puts it, “steamrolling Stanford”. 

It was only fitting that in the same week, Pitchbook announced their 2021 University startup rankings, noting Berkeley as the #2 university globally for VC-backed startups founded by undergraduate alumni, trailing Stanfurd by only 54 startups. We’re not quite the clear winner when it comes to startups (yet). 

Source: Pitchbook

A numbers advantage  

As I wrote last year, Berkeley and Stanfurd have remained largely neck and neck over the last 5 years, with Berkeley passing Stanfurd for the first time in Pitchbook’s 2016-17 Report.

The reality is that Berkeley has over two times more alumni than Stanfurd, so it is inevitable that we will become the #1 producer of VC backed startups. Our data at The House Fund indicates that this fate has already come true, as Pitchbook is missing hundreds of VC-backed Berkeley startups. 

With 30 Cal startups going public in the last 15 months, including 4 at over $30 billion dollar market caps, Berkeley has some serious tailwinds. 

Quantity, and also quality

Pitchbook also tracks MBA alumni, where Berkeley has remained pretty steady at #9. While that seems far from dominant, Berkeley is at a numbers disadvantage in its small MBA program.

Stanfurd recently published a separate analysis putting Berkeley Haas at #3 in terms of the number of Unicorn founders per MBA student. 

This analysis only covers 2000-2015 degrees. Our internal dataset at The House Fund shows the number of Haas founders has increased year-over-year over the last 5 years.

The world of Berkeley startup founders doesn’t stop at undergraduate and MBA alums. 

a more inclusive Methodology

Our thesis, at The House Fund, is to invest in the best Berkeley startups (at least one Cal alum co-founder). That includes recent undergrad and MBA alums, as well as the following other important categories of Berkeley founders not currently covered by Pitchbook: 

• Faculty (current and former)

• PhDs (current and former)

• Alumni of other graduate programs

• Postdocs

• Staff

• Dropouts

Meaningful startup production in these categories, as indicated by our dataset, lead us to believe that Berkeley has clearly, quietly become the #1 producer of VC-backed companies when combining all founder categories.

This is one of the many reasons why I’m bullish on Bears. 

-Fiance