Ilya Strebulaev

“Stanford's Ilya Strebulaev uses real cap tables from Dropbox and Kabbage to show that liquidation preferences, not ownership stakes, determine exit proceeds.”

“The Kabbage case study shows common shareholders holding the largest fully diluted stake (~28%) received zero at a $430M exit, because six preferred series with combined preferences exceeding $435M cleared first.”

“474 of 1,078 Unicorn Founders Are Foreign-Born, From 65 Countries... The relocation effect is large across multiple origin countries, with startups from several nations 2.5x to 9x more likely to reach unicorn status after moving to the US than those that stayed home.”

“Only Stanford, Harvard, and MIT appear in every single year's top 10 across all nine vintages (2017-2025): Stanford took the #1 spot in six of nine vintages but slipped to #3 in 2023 and 2024 before bouncing back to #1 for 2025.”