Visualizing the Princeton Startup Ecosystem
For the very first time, we are proud to present a visual mapping of the Princeton University tech, VC and startup ecosystem.
We would like to thank Thinknum Alternative Data for providing this analysis.
You can access the raw data by clicking this link.
Some interesting findings (based on the specified data conditions):
- There are 75 startups with at least 50 employees that have at least one Princeton founder.
- The most popular cities to start a company are San Francisco (29), New York (15) and Boston (4).
- The class of 2005 had the most founders with 7 followed by the class of 2008 (5) and the classes of 1997, 2007, 2009 and 2011 with 4 each.
- Princeton founders come from all different majors with two notable exceptions: Computer Science (14 founders) and Electrical Engineering (8 founders).
- There are 49 VCs (partner level and above) listed.
- The most popular majors amongst VCs are Economics (7), Public and International Affairs (5), Operations Research and Financial Engineering (4) and Politics (4).
- There was a relatively even distribution of class year amongst VCs, led by the class of 2015 which surprisingly contributed 4 graduates that have made the partner level already.
Background
We formed Chaac Ventures in 2015 specifically to invest in and support the Princeton founder and venture capital ecosystem.
Over the past 5 years we’ve been immersed in the community, investing in, advising and engaging with founders, VCs, technologists and investors.
One of the (many) advantages of being part of the Princeton community is that we have cutting-edge technologists and technology companies right in our own network. Thinknum, founded in 2014 by Justin Zhen (P’10) and Gregory Ugwi (P’08) is one such company.
Thinknum has developed an incredible tool, the KgBase, which is a no-code knowledge graph tool which is open to all users.
As data analysis and AI have become increasingly prevalent across all industries, VC investors too are looking to utilize new tools in their decision-making processes, to add novel quantitative analysis to what has been primarily a qualitative process.
645 Ventures, Ulu Ventures, and Correlation Ventures (lots of Princeton connections), are three such VC firms that have incorporated data analysis into their processes. We too are starting to use more data to inform our decision making.
Mapping startup ecosystems is just one of many use cases for a knowledge graph. We are excited to be working with Justin and Greg and will be sharing additional findings about entrepreneurship at Princeton (and elsewhere) as they become available.
Conditions:
- Only startups with at least 50 employees according to LinkedIn were included.
- Princeton graduates included both undergraduate as well as masters and PhD levels (denoted accordingly).
- VCs only included Partner level or above at major firms.
- Only actual founders were included. CEOs or management that did not actually start the company were not included.
