Skip to main content
Start of main content.

Bond in top two for start-up success

 

 

Alumnus Christian Faes
Alumnus Christian Faes, founder of finance platform LendInvest.

Bond produces more successful start-up founders than almost any other Australian university according to new data published today.

Published in The Australian newspaper, the League of Scholars compiled information from Crunchbase, the top source of data on venture capital funded start-ups, to show which Australian universities had produced the most founders of successful start-ups. 

The figures are based on the number of founders who reached the milestone of attracting venture capital funding. When adjusted for the size of each university, Bond was just beaten for the top spot by UNSW.

Bond can boast 18 graduates over the past 10 years who have founded successful start-ups, which equates to 97 founders for every 100,000 graduates when adjusted for student population.

The university has always had a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship, from its very inception almost 33 years ago as Australia’s first private university, and this latest data highlights the University’s contribution to the innovation economy.

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.

Earlier this year Bond alumni John Christie, who founded modular home company ModnPods while still an MBA and Master of Finance student at Bond, secured Queensland Government funding to double the size of the ModnPods Arundel factory, allowing them to produce 200 modular homes a year.

The State Government support would allow ModnPods to expand its current 1400sqm factory to 6200sqm, cutting pod construction time from 12 to four weeks.

Mr Christie’s business success was borne out of Bond’s Australian-first Transformer program, a fee-free, extracurricular option for all students that’s designed to foster and support start-ups. 

More from Bond

  • Trust in politics at record lows: survey

    As Australians go to the polls, their level of trust in the politicians and parties they’ll be voting for is at record lows

    Read article
  • The heavy lifter: How Francis balances elite sport and a global cause

    Judo one week, weightlifting the next. It's a busy life for PhD student Kelsey Francis.

    Read article
  • AI to speed up mental health care in emergency departments

    Data scientists are developing an artificial intelligence model to fast-track treatment for at-risk mental health patients.

    Read article
  • New data model to combat money laundering

    It’s a faster, more accurate way to uncover illicit shell companies.

    Read article
  • Gold glitters amid tariff troubles

    The price of gold just hit a record high, but Associate Professor of Finance Colette Southam isn’t buying.

    Read article
Previous Next
1 of 5