Delhi University and Bombay University trump IITs

An Ivy League degree may get you a job as an investment banker or VC, but it won't increase your odds of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

So you couldn't get into Stanford, Berkeley or Harvard, huh? Don't sweat it. You can still make it big. Some people might believe that an Ivy League education provides a huge advantage in entrepreneurship. But after researching this over and over again, I?ve found no such correlation. To the contrary, it seems that those who are born without the silver spoons in their mouths are more motivated to succeed. And those who aren?t members of elite alum societies develop the skills needed to hustle in the rough and tough business world. The Ivy-Leaguers may be able to get their buddies from Sequoia and Kleiner to return emails, but they aren't going to be any more successful at building companies.

What makes entrepreneurs successful is the education, not the school. It's the same in India and China. India's IITs and China's Fudan University (their "Ivy League" schools) don't hold any monopoly on graduating tech stars.

In the first research project, we looked at the background of 317 immigrants who started tech companies. We were surprised to learn that Delhi University graduated twice as many Silicon Valley company founders as did IIT Delhi. And that both Osmania and Bombay University trumped nearly all of the IITs. China?s Tianjin University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University graduated more founders than Fudan or Tsinghua.

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