UMD Ranked Top Public School for Tech Entrepreneurship in 2013 StartEngine College IndexThe University of Maryland is the top public school in the U.S. and ranked second overall for tech entrepreneurship, according to the newly released 2013 StartEngine College Index, as reported in the Silicon Valley publication PandoDaily. The author, Howard Marks, co-chair of StartEngine, Los Angeles’ largest startup accelerator, founder and CEO of Acclaim Games (now owned by Disney), and co-founder of Activision and Chairman of Activision Studios (1991-1997) is eager to fund the most talented entrepreneurs and was tired of having only "gut feelings" and "Top Engineering Colleges" lists to work from, so Marks set off to uncover the top underrated entrepreneurial schools in the U.S.—those that many investors pass over. Marks used CrunchBase API data, which lists thousands of data points for funding received by founders of companies, cleaned it up and distilled a list of all the colleges and universities in the U.S. with at least 15 alumni who have founded a startup that has gone on to receive investment. The results, he said, were not what he expected. "Now let’s talk about the biggest surprise among the public schools on our Index: University of Maryland," Marks explained. "Maryland ranks second, with a median capital per founder of $10.3 million. Marks went on to point out that Maryland is "… crushing private schools (including the entire Ivy League) on the StartEngine index." While the high ranking may come as a surprise to many, Marks made note that "people forget that Google was co-founded by a Maryland alum." Sergey Brin graduated from UMD with a degree in computer science and mathematics. Under Armour was founded by UMD alumnus Kevin Plank. Also, Sirius Satellite Radio was co-founded by UMD alumnus Robert Briskman. The historical data for the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech), while not included in Marks's report, support his conclusions:
October 3, 2013 Prev Next |