Which university produces the most start-ups?

A new study has looked at the top 500 German start-ups and listed which universities or colleges produce the most. The results stand out from other rankings.

Which university produces the most start-ups? The top five places were taken by TU Munich, LMU Munich, WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, TU Berlin and the University of Mannheim, according to the results of a study conducted by a team from TU Munich and the investor Blockrocket. The study was based on the top 500 start-ups in Germany according to Crunchbase and, in contrast to other studies, the ratio to the number of students was also taken into account. The Otto Beisheim School of Management took first place. 48 start-ups have emerged from the university. ESCP Business School follows with 20 start-ups, while the European Business School Oestrich-Winkel is in third place with 18 start-ups.

The authors of the study emphasize that their research design differs significantly from other previous rankings by looking at "not only key figures on absolute entrepreneurship performance (number of start-ups at the university) but also relative entrepreneurship performance (start-ups at the university in relation to the number of students)". All founders of the Top 500 in Germany are included. This also means that universities such as the University of Bremen or RWTH Aachen, which have always taken first place in the rankings, are not among the top ten in the study.

The team plans to publish further rankings in the future and take an even closer look at diversity, type of start-up, industries, deep tech versus low tech, migration flows of founders from universities and other aspects.