Bond University is the top Australian university for entrepreneurship according to new data published by The Australian newspaper.
The national masthead reports League of Scholars used information from Crunchbase, the top source of data on venture capital funded start-ups, to discover which Australian universities had produced the most founders of successful start-ups – those that have attracted venture capital funding.
Adjusted for size of university by using the number of start-up founders per 100,000 graduates over the past 10 years, Bond came out on top.
Bond alumni who have gone on to found successful enterprises include Neeti Mehta Shukla, founder of the US$6.8 billion robotic process automation company Automation Anywhere; Christian Faes, whose property finance platform LendInvest was recently listed on the London Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of US$389 million; and Jack Stevens, co-founder of Edstart, a start-up that makes it easier to for parents to pay private school fees. Edstart is backed by the National Australia Bank’s venture capital fund and recently raised $10 million.
Bond University fosters student start-ups through its Australian-first entrepreneurship program Transformer which is offered as a fee-free, extracurricular option to undergraduate and postgraduate students from all disciplines.
Transformer Director Daniel Abrahams said entrepreneurship was in Bond’s DNA.
“Entrepreneurship is viewed as a core leadership capability at Bond University that enables students to transform their ideas into products or services that solve customer problems,” Mr Abrahams said.
“Our students are individually nurtured to become founders with a clear sense of the execution capabilities required to bring ideas to life.
“Entrepreneurship will continue to be a key differentiator at Bond University as we see the commercialisation of student ventures into sustainable businesses that provide employment and a contribution to Australia’s economic future.”
The University recently appointed one of Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs, Stuart Giles, as its inaugural Founder-in-Residence.
Mr Giles is the co-founder of Icon Cancer Group, Epic Pharmacy Group and the Epic Good Foundation.
Mr Abrahams said a current Bond success story is modular house and office start-up ModnPods, founded by alumnus John Christie while he was a student.
The Australian also reports the median income of 2007 Bond University graduates is the third-highest of Australian university graduates at $93,900.
The new income data is the most comprehensive ever gathered on graduate salaries and is based on tax data gathered from the Higher Education Loan Program. It captures a snapshot of 2007 graduates’ median income in 2018.