💸 Claremont’s Early-Stage Startup Success

Data on early-stage Claremont-founded companies and the top-tier investors backing them

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Since the early 2000s, the Claremont Colleges have quietly started establishing itself as a highly successful university producer of entrepreneurs and founders. We’ve scraped a variety of internet sources, including LinkedIn, Pitchbook, and Crunchbase, and found that the numbers of Claremont entrepreneurs, Claremont-founded companies, and Claremont financings rounds have all steadily increased year after year to a point where Claremont’s startup and entrepreneurship ecosystem can no longer be overlooked.

We’ve found that historically, Claremont founders have founded over 1,100 venture-backable startups that have gone on to raise over $50.6B in financings. Twenty of these companies have gone on to IPO, 164 have been acquired, and another 15 are currently privately valued north of $1B. 🦄

Claremont’s ecosystem has had major IPOs like Cisco (current $164B market cap), Avalara (current $8.1B market cap), Doximity (current $5.8B market cap), and Intellia Therapeutics (current $4.2B market cap); and has had major acquisitions like Github ($7.5B by Microsoft), Kyphon ($3.9B by Medtronic), and Cruise Automation ($1.2B by GM).

However, the success of this ecosystem isn’t just in the past. The future is even brighter as most of these 1,100 + Claremont-founded startups have been founded in the last decade. These early-stage companies are not only being built but they’re also being financed and backed by top-tier investors.

Over the last ten years, Claremont-founded companies have raised at least 979 financing rounds from investors and venture capital institutions for over $31B*. Of those 979 financings, 512 have been early-stage financings (Pre-seed, Seed, and Series A rounds). These numbers are also a conservative estimate, given that some financing rounds happen unannounced, particularly at the early stages. Below are Claremont’s total early-stage financings over the past decade, broken down by early-stage round type.

Unsurprisingly, investors and institutions have started to take notice of these impressive Claremont founders and their companies, and 42% of those 512 early-stage financing rounds involved top-tier institutional investors and VC firms**. Below are some of the most active, top-tier institutional investors in Claremont-founded companies over the last decade.

Over the last decade, the Claremont startup ecosystem has averaged ~100 financings rounds and over $3B in raised capital per year. Some of the most active investors in the ecosystem right now are top-tier investors like Y Combinator, 8VC, Techstars, Greylock, and a16z.

This seems like an ecosystem to start giving some attention to. 👀

[*] These numbers are according to data scrapes from Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and Pitchbook. They are conservative estimates, given that funding rounds can be delayed or unannounced.

[**] Top-tier investors and institutions defined by AUM, historical track records, and reputational excellence

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