In a recent post at Medium’s Noteworthy – The Journal Blog, Richard Kerby discusses his recent analysis of “the demographic breakdowns of the venture industry.” As one might expect, much of the discussion focuses on racial, ethnic, and sexual disparities, particularly the over-representation of white males among venture capitalists (currently 58%, down from 67% in 2016). More striking to me, however — and to Kerby as well it would seem — was the over-representation of graduates from just two universities:
I have decided to add one more dataset to my collection; where each investor earned their undergraduate and graduate degrees. Although I suspected that there would be a high concentration among a select number of institutions, I was still shocked to see how insular the industry really is. After going through ~1,500 investors, I found that 40% of venture investors have attended Stanford or Harvard. Just TWO schools!
