Yale University: Successful Alumni That Founded Startups

Yale University often makes you think of gothic spires, ivy-covered walls and secret societies with names that sound like they’ve been borrowed from a Dan Brown novel. And fair enough. Its been around since 1701, located in New Haven, Connecticut and boasts alumni that include five US presidents, nineteen Supreme Court justices and more Nobel laureates that one could comfortably remember off-hand. It’s almost like it’s woven into the fabric of American academic life in a way that few institutions are.

But when you look beyond the pageantry and alumni dinners, Yale has quite the reputation for churning out startup founders. Individuals who walked within its walls have ended up building some of the most recognisable companies on the planet. The kind of businesses that have completely changed how we shop, move things around the world and how we waste time on our phones well after midnight.

What Does Yale’s Startup Scene Look Like?

While Yale may not necessarily shout about its entrepreneurial side the way some universities do, it’s certainly there. The Tsai Centre for Innovative Thinking (who happens to be named after one of the founders on this very list) sits at the heart of it, running workshops and funding competitions to encourage students with ideas to turn them into something that could be pitched in front of investors.

The Yale School of Management has also focused on entrepreneurship over the last decade, having its own accelerators and mentor networks. Of course, there’s also Yale Ventures, which works to turn research projects into companies that could survive in the real world.

Its real asset, though, is its Yale network. It’s one of the strongest alumni webs that you’ll find anywhere in the world and it’s common for people to start businesses with their roommates or raise money from the parents of classmates. The connections seem to stay strong even long after graduation which is why so many Yale alumni end up building together.

10 Successful Alumni That Founded Startups

Here are ten Yale alumni who went on to build major global companies spanning e-commerce, logistics, fashion, food and healthcare. It’s a varied bunch, which is sort of the point because it shows you just how much innovation is brewing on that campus.

1. Joe Tsai, Co-founder and Chairman of Alibaba

If you’ve bought something from a Chinese e-commerce site in the last two decades, there’s a good chance that Joe Tsai had something to do with it. After completing his undergraduate degree at Yale, he returned for law school and during a stint in private equity, he met Jack Ma, a former English teacher and together they built Alibaba.

Tsai became executive vice chairman, growing the business into one of the biggest companies known globally – and used some of that fortune to buy the Brooklyn Nets. The Tsai Centre for Innovative Thinking at Yale now carries his name which one would agree that is quite the full-circle moment.

2. Ben Silbermann, Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Pinterest

Pinterest almost didn’t happen – cue the gasps from creatives and aesthetic-lovers. Ben Silbermann studied political science at Yale and went on to work at Google in a non-engineering role. After a failed iPhone app called Tote, Silbermann launched Pinterest in 2010 with some friends.

For months, the platform had barely any users but today, it boasts over 500 million including creators and photographers from all over the world and is one of the most recognised social platforms. After a few years, Silbermann handed over the CEO role to focus on the executive chairman seat.

3. Fred Smith, Founder of FedEx

While at Yale studying economics, Fred Smith wrote a paper about a hub-and-spoke overnight delivery service – and reportedly got quite a mediocre grade for it. In the past, Smith shrugged it off saying the story was a bit exaggerated, but the paper did exist and the idea did eventually become FedEx.

It launched in 1971 and nearly went bankrupt on more than one occasion. Smith famously once took the company’s last remaining thousand dollars to Las Vegas and won enough blackjack to make payroll that week. Today, FedEx is a global logistics giant moving millions of parcels a day. While Smith passed away in 2025, his legacy will continue to live on.

4. Kevin Ryan, Founder of MongoDB

If you’ve ever read a Business Insider article, bought something from Gilt or used MongoDB on a development project, you’ve bumped into Kevin Ryan’s work. Ryan completed his undergrad at Yale, did his MBA at Columbia and then built a career that includes running DoubleClick as CEO, co-founding MongoDB, launching Business Insider and setting up AlleyCorp.

He is undoubtedly one of the most prolific founders of his generation which almost makes you wonder what you’ve been doing on your weekends. MongoDB is now a publicly traded company that is worth tens of billions of dollars.

5. Jennifer Fleiss, Co-founder of Rent the Runway

Rent the Runway originated from a very common, frustrating issue. Jennifer Fleiss’s classmate wanted to borrow a designer dress for a wedding and couldn’t justify the price tag. While at Yale as an undergrad, Fleiss met Jennifer Hyman at Harvard Business School and the two decided to start a business that would let women rent high-end fashion instead of buying it.

The platform launched in 2009 and was the reason for an entire generation changing how they thought about owning clothes. A few years ago, Fleiss left her operational role and has moved into investing and advising, including launching Jetblack with Walmart.

6. Ted Bailey, Founder and CEO of Dataminr

Founded by Yale grad Ted Bailey in 2009, Dataminr uses AI to pull real-time signals out of massive volumes of public data and alert clients to events as they’re happening in real-time, from newsrooms and financial firms to emergency services and governments. Think the kind of software that identifies a factory explosion or natural disaster minutes before anyone else is reporting it.

Bailey built the first version out of his apartment with a few of his Yale classmates and the company is now valued way into the billions. Despite being one of those companies that sits in the background without most people knowing that it exists, it’s doing some incredibly important work.

7. Jonathan Swanson, Co-Founder and Chairman of Thumbtack

If you’ve ever needed to find a plumber, wedding photographer or someone to fix a very specific crack in a very specific wall, Thumbtack has likely come up in your search. Jonathan Swanson co-founded the company in 2008 after graduating from Yale and it connects people who need local services with those that provide them.

The marketplace model is notoriously tricky and Thumbtack spent many years tweaking its pricing. Today, it’s one of the biggest players in the US home services space and is worth several billion dollars. Swanson has since moved on to other projects, inluding Anthology, a philanthropy-focused venture.

8. Noah Glass, Founder and CEO of Olo

Not to be confused with the Noah Glass who co-founded Twitter, Noah Glass went to Yale and then founded Olo in 2005. It stands for “online ordering” and powers digital ordering for restaurants behind the scenes.

If you’ve ordered from Shake Shack, Five Guys, Chipotle or just about any large American restaurant chain in the past decade, Olo was almost certainly part of the plumbing. The company went public in 2021 and is still a major force in the restaurant tech space today.

9. Tom Lee, Founder and Executive Chairman at One Medical

Tom Lee trained as a doctor at Yale School of Medicine which gave him a first-hand look into why visiting a doctor in America is often a frustrating experience with long waits, rushed appointments and paperwork that doesn’t seem to end. He founded One Medical in 2007 which is a membership-based primary care service focusing on same-day appointments and longer visits.

It became one of the most recognisable names in modernised healthcare, went public and was eventually acquired by Amazon in 2023 for just under four billion dollars.

10. Matthew Brimer, Co-founder of General Assembly

Matthew Brimer co-founded General Assembly in 2011 with a few partners after leaving Yale and spending some time in the New York startup scene. It began as a co-working space and then pivoted into education and became one of the biggest names in alternative tech training.

It was acquired by Adecco in 2018 for around 400 million dollars and Brimer has since launched a few new projects, including Daybreaker, a sober morning dance party series that runs in cities around the world. His portfolio is rather broad, spanning education, nightlife and wellness. There’s no real obvious theme running except for curiosity.