Northeastern does a huge amount of entrepreneurial activity across its campuses in the US, Canada and London. The hard part is capturing it: who founded what, where, who raised and who exited. We ran the first pass after the call. 15,500+ people in our index list a Northeastern school and have held a founder title, and 530+ companies they founded have raised outside funding. Below: five plays, plus six more for the data, marketing and admissions teams.
We do a huge amount of entrepreneurial activity.
Those that have raised funding, those that have exited their business.
When I say alum, I actually could be including current students as well.
Drive awareness of Northeastern's entrepreneurship activity.
I just need to try and identify who does what, where, and then help report it.
One global list, not one per campus, built so it can feed a ranking, a report and a post.
Profiles name the school in many ways: Northeastern University London, New College of the Humanities, D'Amore-McKim, Khoury. The pull catches every version and leaves out the unrelated Northeastern University in China.
Students who start companies before they graduate count too. A grad year of 2027 or later marks them, so they sit in the same list as alumni.
A founder title alone picks up side projects. The list that matters joins each founder to the company's funding rounds, acquisitions and listings.
PitchBook's table of entrepreneurial universities is one of the few outside measures of this, and it can only count founders it can see. Today Northeastern sits at 61.
Quoted from call on Oct 27
Ordered by how fast they could run. 01 and 02 are the founder list itself, 03 is for marketing, 04 only Northeastern can run, and 05 keeps the list current for the data team. We show companies and titles here; names come back in the pull.
Our first pass after the call found 15,500+ people in our index who list a Northeastern school and have held a founder title. 8,900+ are founders today. They live across the US, the UK, Canada and well beyond, and 940+ have a grad year of 2027 or later, so current students are in from day one.
person_search on education.schools.school.experience.employment_details.title.basic_profile.location.One list for the whole university, refreshed whenever it's needed, instead of each campus keeping its own.
| Segment | Founders |
|---|---|
| Any Northeastern school | 15,500+ |
| Still a founder today | 8,900+ |
| Live in the US now | 13,000+ |
| Live in the UK now | 290+ |
| Live in Canada now | 230+ |
| Studied at the London campus (incl. NCH) | 220+ |
| D'Amore-McKim School of Business | 1,100+ |
| Grad year 2027 or later | 940+ |
Each founder's company is joined to its funding, acquisitions and listings. 530+ companies founded by Northeastern people have raised outside funding, 65+ of them with a round dated 2026. 180+ show an acquisition, Onshape among them, and 15+ went public, including Five9 and Netskope.
company_search on funding.total_investment_usd, funding.last_round_type and revenue.acquisition_status.Exited founders are also the natural mentors, judges and speakers for the start-up hub. This is the list that answers who raised and who exited.
| Company | Alum's title | Latest round |
|---|---|---|
| Inspiren | Co-Founder | Series C · Sep |
| Abcuro | CEO, CSO & Founder | Series D · Aug |
| Walden Robotics | Co-Founder & COO | Seed · Jul |
| Code Metal | Founder | Series B · Feb |
The WHU and Mannheim posts worked because the numbers were specific and the founders could see themselves in them. Northeastern has bigger numbers and more ways to cut them: by campus, by college, by year, by sector. One post per campus or college means each one has a home crowd to reshare it.
person_search and company_search.Rankings move slowly. A post with the right number and the right founders tagged moves this week.
15,500+ Northeastern alumni and students have founded something. 530+ of their companies have raised funding, 180+ have been acquired, and 65+ raised a round this year. Congrats to Inspiren, Abcuro, Walden Robotics, Code Metal and every Husky building something.
Co-op is what Northeastern is known for, and the profiles show it. 36,000+ people in our index list a Northeastern school and a co-op role. 1,900+ of them have also held a founder title. That's a story no other university can tell: the co-op that came before the company.
person_search with all_of on experience.employment_details.title.Co-op to company, backed by 1,900+ career histories. Admissions gets a reason to choose Northeastern; co-op employers get a reason to stay close.
A list goes stale the day after it's built. 1,000+ people who list a Northeastern school started a founder role since January 1, about a hundred a month. Watches catch new founders and new rounds as they happen and push them to the data team, so nobody re-runs the pull.
watch_discovery_createfunding.last_fundraise_date, revenue.acquisition_status.Reporting season stops being a scramble. The list is current the day someone asks for it.
Grouped by team. Each one runs on the same data as the founder list, so one setup serves all of them.
Send profile URLs or emails and get back each person's current employer, title and location. 290,000+ people in our index list a Northeastern school.
Every person and company carries a Crustdata ID, so each new pull updates rows instead of adding duplicates. Joins cleanly to whatever system holds alumni today.
Watches post to a webhook when a tracked person or company changes: a new title, a new round, an acquisition. Billed per change, not per re-run.
The London campus has 220+ founders (including the New College of the Humanities years), D'Amore-McKim has 1,100+. Each cut is a post with its own crowd.
Where each program's grads work today: top employers, titles and cities, for program pages and recruiting events. Real outcomes, refreshed each term.
36,000+ people list a Northeastern school and a co-op role. See which co-op employers went on to hire them, and which co-ops led to a company.
Claude, connected to Crustdata through our MCP, pulls the numbers and drafts the copy. A design tool turns that into the graphic. Our growth team uses a few of these, and Doug is sharing their picks so marketing can choose one.
Yes, with one honest limit. Campus comes from how each person names the school on their profile. The London campus shows up clearly (220+ founders, including the New College of the Humanities years). Many Toronto, Vancouver and Seattle grads list plain "Northeastern University", so for those we split by program and by where people live now.
Yes. 940+ people with a Northeastern grad year of 2027 or later already list a founder title. They sit in the same list, marked as students.
It runs on credits. It can be a monthly allotment that refreshes each month, or a one-time block first, moving to recurring once usage is clear. The two shapes are just below.
An executed order form with an effective date. Then the data starts flowing, on timing that works for Northeastern.
Pricing for each comes with our follow-up, sized to what the data and marketing teams expect to run.
Buy a block of credits up front, see how each team uses it, then move to a recurring plan.
Credits refresh each month on the date you sign, invoiced monthly, and scale with volume.
The bigger the commitment, one-off or annual, the better the price.
Everything below came out of the call. No dates we didn't agree to.
15,500+ founders, 530+ funded companies, 180+ acquisitions, all pulled on Oct 27.
Their areas of interest, and a rough sense of first-block usage, back to Doug.
Our growth team's graphics tools, and numbers sized to the first block.
Review what the teams want, pick the shape, and get the first pull running.
One list of every Northeastern founder across the campuses, kept current, ready for the rankings, the reports and the next post.