Irish universities are among the best in Europe for nurturing entrepreneurs and producing start-ups.
According to a report by Pitchbook, a data and technology provider for the global private equity and venture capital markets, Trinity College Dublin has produced the highest number of entrepreneurs in Europe since 2010.
The college generated 114 entrepreneurs and 106 companies, which have raised about $655 million in the past five years. University College Dublin came fourth in the list.
Artomatix, which has created a game designing app, is just one of the many start-ups with roots at Trinity. It presented at the influential Disrupt conference, in San Francisco, last month.
Earlier this year Trinity agreed a partnership with the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, an arm of the global private equity firm, to establish its Launchpad programme in Europe, which will provide students with a network of business coaches.
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The study found that UCD produced 70 entrepreneurs and 62 companies. Its firms raised about $275 million.
Earlier this week Logentries, which was launched by students at UCD, was acquired by Rapid7 for $36 million in cash and $32 million in shares. The data analytics company was founded in 2010 by Trevor Parsons and Viliam Holub in UCD’s school of computer science.
Pitchbook’s report looked at the number of undergraduate alumni who have founded companies that received a first round of venture capital funding. The University of Oxford ranked second in the list, with 72 entrepreneurs and companies. Companies that began life at Copenhagen Business School raised the highest amount in Europe, at $1.3 billion.
Pitchbook compiled its rankings of undergraduate and MBA programmes worldwide by monitoring its venture capital database of more than 25,000 valuations, 970,000 people and 78,000 venture-backed companies from 2010 to 2015.
The top university overall was Stanford, which produced 561 entrepreneurs, followed by the University of California, Berkeley with 536. Tel Aviv University, which was ninth, was the only institution outside the United States to make the the top ten list of universities worldwide. Trinity ranked 40th globally, the only European university to make the top 50.
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The Universities Report separately ranked the top producing MBA programmes in Europe. UCD was eighth on the list, with 18 companies and $164 million raised. The top ranking MBA programme in Europe was Insead, the graduate business school near Paris, with 185 entrepreneurs, 165 companies and more than $1.9 billion raised.