???????? ???????????????? ?????????? ???? ???? ??25 – ????????????’?? ?????????????? ???????????? ???????????? ???????????? ????????????????????! ??
Out of 254 founders in the current YC W25 batch, 6 founders (across 3 startups) hail from CDTM - an institution with just ~25 students per semester and a 4-semester program.
To put this in perspective:
?? If CDTM were a standalone university (rather than a joint program of TUM & LMU), it would rank #15 globally for the number of founders in this batch.
?? Given its small student body, CDTM surpasses even Stanford & MIT in founder representation relative to enrollment.
And CDTM’s influence doesn’t stop there:
?? TUM now ranks 6th globally - the only German university on the list, with representation in the past YC batch.
?? 6 out of 8 founders that studied at TUM also studied at CDTM.
?? This isn’t a one-off—back in YC S24 for instance, 8 CDTM founders joined the cohort!
The track record speaks for itself:
? 1,100+ alumni
? 280+ startups
? 9 unicorns (25% of Germany’s unicorns!)
? $30B+ combined valuation
? $120M average valuation per startup - on par with YC-backed startups (5,000 startups, $600B total valuation).
The numbers don’t lie—CDTM is shaping the next generation of global founders, and Munich’s startup scene is thriving ????
P.S.: This post was inspired by Christopher Klaus, but since it didn’t mention CDTM, TUM, or relative numbers, I decided to do a deep dive myself - compiling a list of all founders along with their startups and universities (and spotting some discrepancies in the numbers along the way). For consistency, I only included full-time bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD programs, excluding semester abroad students, and only considered institutions with more than two founders.
Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) Technical University of Munich Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t München
Arkadiy Telegin & Kevin Wu for Leaping AI (YC W25)
Adina Goerres & Stefan Faistenauer for superglue (YC W25)
Stefan Zheng & Lukas Bock for Mercura (YC W25)