Q: I am wondering why is it that the vast majority of all VC partners either come from Harvard or Stanford?
A: (Jason) I'll tell you as a University of Michigan guy, it certainly seems like a lot of VCs have pedigrees from Harvard or Stanford, but plenty of folks have degrees from other places too. We have 5 partners and "only" two have a Stanford pedigree. Clearly none of us were smart enough to get into Harvard, although Brad went to MIT and I think that qualifies.
I won't try to opine that I really know the percentage of VCs with Harvard or Stanford backgrounds, but I searched around the web today and looked at some of my colleagues educational institutions and it appears that much less than half have degrees from there.
Posted in: General QandA | Posted by: Jason Mendelson
I just checked and there are 927 Harvard Business School alumni who list their industry as venture capital and according to the NVCA, there are 798 venture capital firms in the US. So, on average, you can expect about 1 HBS alumni per fund.