The tech entrepreneurs that raised £1m+ the fastest after graduation
Online business bank, Tide, analysed over 1,000 UK university alumni on Technation.io who went on to found a tech startup to discover which alumni are the quickest at launching and funding their tech companies after graduating.
Key findings:
- Most tech entrepreneurs raised their first £1m 2 to 4 years after launching a company.
- Alumni from Brunel University and the University of Surrey were the quickest to raise £1m or more from a single funding round.
- On average, women raise their first £1m faster than men.
Additional information: - There were 283 tech entrepreneurs who founded their company within 0 – 2 years of finishing their studies at a UK university. Each later time range is gradually less common for launching a tech startup post-education.
Tech companies founded by women who previously studied at Kingston University were quickest to raise £1m or more in a single funding round, managing this achievement within 1.3 years, on average.
Universities | Average time to raise first £1m+ |
Kingston University | 1.3 years |
University of Edinburgh | 1.5 years |
University of Oxford | 1.5 years |
University of Westminster | 1.7 years |
Imperial College London | 2.2 years |
University of Cambridge | 2.5 years |
London School of Economics and Political Science | 2.7 years |
Royal College of Art | 3 years |
University of Arts London | 3 years |
University of York | 4 years |
It only took a year to Joanne Filbin, founder of Globacap, who attended Kingston University, to raise $1.5m after 2 previous rounds of less than £1m investments.
Of those who graduated between 2000 and 2019, the University of Oxford counts more tech founder graduates who started their business aged 35 or younger than any other university in the UK.
Universities | No. of tech entrepreneurs aged 35 and under |
University of Oxford | 100 |
University of Cambridge | 76 |
Imperial College London | 53 |
University of Bristol | 38 |
London School of Economics and Political Science | 38 |
University College London | 32 |
University of Nottingham | 30 |
King’s College London | 24 |
University of Manchester | 24 |
University of Warwick | 20 |
Robert Grieg-Gran went on to co-launch Mindful Chef in 2014 only a few years after his graduation from Oxford University. So far, the company has received more than £10m in fundings.
The full study can be found here