UNSW named Australia's most entrepreneurial university

The University of NSW has been ranked as the top university in the ANZ region for producing alumni who have founded startups that have raised more than US$10 million (AU$15.3 million) in funding.

The university ranked 74th globally on the list of educational institutions compiled by Dealroom.co due to the presence of alumni including the founders of Atlassian (US$60 million in total funding), Forage (US$36.8 million), Airtasker (US$84.5 million), Weel (US$22.6 million) and shippit (US$78.1 million).

One reason behind the relative success of UNSW Alumni by this metric has been UNSW Founders, a program that offers a suite of free accelerator programs for budding entrepreneurs.

UNSW Founders Director of Entrepreneurship David Burt said the university is delighted to have been named Australia’s most entrepreneurial university.

“It’s fantastic to see UNSW recognised for the world-class talent and highly successful companies it fosters. Whilst UNSW has a long history of supporting the innovations of tomorrow, we wouldn’t have achieved this ranking without our UNSW Founders program,” he said.

“UNSW Founders recognises that entrepreneurship is an important career path and provides founders with a launch pad to turn their ideas into global companies. It’s the catalyst for getting ideas out of the lab and into the real world and we look forward to nurturing more exceptional startups to help propel Australia’s innovation further. A huge thank you to all of our philanthropic donors as well — UNSW couldn’t have achieved this result without your support.”

Burt said Dealroom.co’s statistics show that over 22,000 alumni from universities worldwide have founded startups that have achieved substantial funding. A whopping 85% of these graduates embarked on their entrepreneurial journey in the past decade, with one in seven doing so since just 2020.

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