People at UNSW know how to build. UNSW was originally established to meet Australia’s need for a university specializing in training high-quality engineers and technology professionals.

Since then we have grown into a comprehensive university, but we have preserved in our DNA the important truth that the value of an idea is how we put it into practice.

So it didn’t come as a surprise when the Australian ranked UNSW as the number one Australian university for producing successful entrepreneurs.

The ranking, published this week in the 2023 Research Magazine, rated universities by the number of venture capital startups founded by their graduates, adjusted for university size. UNSW was the clear winner, with an impressive 105 VC-funded founders per 100,000 graduates over the past 10 years. UNSW also has the highest raw number of graduate founders to attract VC funding – 143 over the past decade.

The Australian’s ranking comes from the back of PitchBook’s Annual Ranking of Universities last week. After analyzing data from 144,000 VC-backed founders, UNSW was revealed in 2022 as #1 in Australia for total capital raised and #2 (#84 globally) for most founders and startups.

With a whopping $5.6 billion in capital raised by UNSW startups, Rocket Internet led the attack with $1.1 billion, Xendit with $535 million, followed by Rokt with $487 million. Earlier this year at UNSW Founders, we had the honor of hosting an exclusive Ask Me Anything session with Xendit co-founder and CEO Moses Lo (read about it here).

UNSW also recently recorded the highest number of new spin-outs (value-creating companies created by licensing or transfer of intellectual property from universities) launched in 2021 and 2022 in Australia and New Zealand. Knowledge Commercialization Australia’s Survey of Commercialization Outcomes from Public Research (SCOPR) reports that UNSW has established 10 new spin-outs in 2021.

Collectively, the 43 Australian universities in the SCOPR last year brought in $250 million in research commercialization revenue, achieving positive impact on society across a wide range of technologies, from life sciences to MedTech, IT and engineering solutions.

Six startups led by UNSW researchers:

• EnerJin Pty Ltd NJ Ekins-Daukes
• Infinity Avionics Pty Ltd Igor Dimitrijevic
• OLIM RESEARCH Pty Ltd Bill Walsh
• CHELTech Pty Ltd Sean Smith
• RadioDynamic Therapeutics Inc. Ewa Goldys
• Zyteum Pty Ltd Joe Dong

Four others based on UNSW technology:

• Kandui Technologies Pty Ltd Green ceramics from Veena Sahajwalla
• Vesi Group Pty Ltd Rakesh Joshi and Graphene Oxide
• LM Plus Pty Ltd Kourosh Kalantar Zadeh
• Healthy@Home Pty Ltd Branko Cellar

The number of UNSW spinouts in 2021 will be double that of 2020 and is a testament to the impact of the university’s tireless work to instill an entrepreneurial ethic in our students, staff and alumni.

UNSW has always been a powerhouse at the forefront of research and discovery. Our students, researchers, entrepreneurs and graduates are paving the way for the future with their innovations. The university is focused on facilitating an entrepreneurial and innovative culture that helps turn ideas into reality, better than any other higher education institution in Australia.

lNotably, by accelerating the complex and sometimes arduous journey of bringing brilliant ideas to market and commercializing research that pushes the boundaries of knowledge and technology to improve lives around the world. Here at UNSW Founders, our sole mission is to embed entrepreneurship on campus and support UNSW students, staff and alumni in building entrepreneurial skills, establishing and growing real businesses.

In 2022 alone, the UNSW Founders-seeded businesses have raised $23.4 million, with a total of $110 million raised so far since 2018.

UNSW Founders is Australia’s most comprehensive university entrepreneurship program. We support entrepreneurs who take their ideas from the curiosity stage to a fast-growing startup. Since 2018, we have supported over 600 startups and funded over 70 of them through our flagship 10x accelerator programs.

Last month it was announced a quarter of Australia’s 100 Best Innovators were affiliated with UNSW.

This news came from the back of The Australian’s report that UNSW was ranked the best university overall for aspiring entrepreneurs with ~100 startup founders raising VC funding.

For more information on UNSW founders, click here.