Waterloo ranks at the top for generating founders and female entrepreneurs

The University of Waterloo has again been ranked the best amongst Canadian universities for producing successful entrepreneurs with undergraduate degrees, according to the 2024 PitchBook university rankings.

Waterloo is recognized as a leading global research-intensive university renowned for entrepreneurship and innovation, providing co-op and work-integrated learning at scale with impact. PitchBook, which tracks investments in venture capital and private equity markets, reveals that Waterloo has produced 562 founders, 478 companies and $20 billion USD raised in capital.

The report also ranks Waterloo second in Canada for producing female founders, and the university remains in the top 100 for graduate-degree founders with 184 entrepreneurs who have raised $4.1 billion USD collectively.

Entrepreneurial researchers and students have long been drawn to Waterloo’s distinct innovation ecosystem that delivers unmatched experiential education, exposure to leading entrepreneurship programs, support, mentorship, funding and connections in a collaborative environment that includes Velocity — Waterloo's flagship incubator program.

“Students are finding important real-world problems during co-op terms and then leveraging their industry insights with Velocity to create great solutions. It’s a powerful formula to develop the mindset to succeed as a founder,” says John Dick, Velocity’s senior director of founder development.

Over the last ten years Waterloo alumni have raised over $0.5 trillion USD in venture capital, signalling the importance of Waterloo alumni in shaping our future economy. More than 400 startups have grown from Velocity and collectively they have generated more than $26 billion USD in enterprise value.  

“Universities are essential to Canada’s entrepreneurial ecosystem, and we recognize and celebrate our colleagues in the top 100 at the University of Toronto and McGill University,” executive director of Velocity, Adrien Côté says. “We need to foster student-initiated entrepreneurship because our recent alumni can have an outsized impact on our economy when they build a fast-growing business.” 

The latest Pitchbook rankings recognize Waterloo’s position at the forefront of fostering the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs poised to lead and thrive in the global innovation race. The talent we develop at Waterloo will continue to have a significant economic impact in our region and around the world. Learn more about the rankings and read the full report on the PitchBook website.