I'm disheartened by the high percentage of funded startups which have founders who either graduated from top schools like Stanford/Harvard or had previously started companies which had big exits. What is the likelihood of a UC or Cal State grad founder getting funded?

Equally low as the people you mentioned. It matters much less than you think. Build a product that gets traction and the right people will talk to you regardless of your background.

Prestigious institutions give you a strong network. It's one of the best justifications out there for getting a top-tier MBA. This question is a lot like the, "can I get funded outside of the Valley?" question, and they both have the same answer: Sure. Of course. You can get funded anywhere. What you should be asking yourself is whether you are willing to devote the extra effort necessary to build a network? Are you willing to travel and meet people? Are you willing to work header and sweat more? In general, the odds are getting funded are low, very low. Even if a prestigious degree doubles those odds in and of itself (it doesn't), the odds are still extremely low. You're much better off thinking about ways for you to build your network, build your product, and connect to people who may wish to fund you than to worry too much about the paper on your wall. Also, here's one for free -- do you really need to get funded to make your startup work? There are two ways to get a VCs attention: 1. Get a referral to someone they are already funding. 2. Get early traction and prove revenue potential. Often it is much better to build a solid product and have money coming in the door -before- you start courting outside capital.

You're pattern matching, which is misguided. And you're not pattern matching correctly. Travis Kalanick, Uber's founder, went to UCLA, Palmer Lucky, a founder of Oculus, went to Cal State Long Beach and Nellie Akalp, a founder of my http://corporation.com (sold for $20m to Intuit) went to Cal State Northridge. Nanxi Liu of Enplug (she and I co-advise Infobitt) went to Cal and raised about $3-4M. My friend Jilliene Helman went to Georgetown and raised about $8M total. Laura Behrens Wu of Shippo (I invested a bit in a fund that invested in Shippo) raised $2M and went to https://www.linkedin.com/edu/school?id=10928&trk=prof-edu-school-name. Many others but I will stop there for now.

Never look at averages, look at standouts. Elon Musk - UPenn, he did go to Stanford, for 2 days... Steve Jobs - Reed College drop out Marc Benioff - USC in the 80's (before it's rise in rankings) Larry Page & Sergey Brin - Michigan & Maryland undergrads, admittedly went to Stanford then dropped out as PhDs Dennis Crowley - NYU, Tisch, Syracuse Jack Dorsey - NYU, Missouri Michael Dell - University of Texas Brian Chesky - RISD Need I go on?.... Note: I don't mean to belittle these colleges, they are all great schools, I just wanted to point out not everyone who succeeds in Tech goes to Stanford or Harvard.

I would suspect that the reason why these people got funded is because they had a network of contacts from these schools, not because there is a secret handshake that lets them into these contacts.  If I had gone to Harvard, which I did not, I would have access to a class of people that have access to significant money that could be used for funding.  If I had gone to just a general state school, I would have access to those people.  All is NOT lost. At the end of the day, I have found that funding is more about having customers & prototypes and less about the secret handshake.  I would suggest that you: Find potential customers.  Talk to these customers. Survey these potential customers.  Get hard data on what their suggestions are. Build a prototype.  Get the prototype into people's hands.  Let them work with it and tell you what they like and don't like. Iterate on the prototype. Once you have gotten a prototype into a customers hands and gotten some feedback, then you have a good case to go look for funding.  You should always be networking to grow your network of potential funders, but hitting them up for money before you have gotten a prototype working and in someone's hands probably won't do much for you. Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard Business School.  Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College.  Steve Wozniak graduated from UC Berkley in 1986.  I am unsure if Larry Ellison graduated from college from his wikipedia page or not. PS.  Don't worry, it is easy to get frustrated.  I know.  I get frustrated all the time.

I have degrees from UC San Diego and the University of Southern California, and my company got funded.  None of the of the other founders went to Stanford or Harvard either.  Sure, it would have been great to the Harvard/Stanford pedigree, but, in the end, it's the idea and quality of the team that get funded, not the school. Focus on what you and your team bring to the table, not Stanford or Harvard.  I will not lie to you - raising money is not for the faint of heart.  It can be done with hard work and persistence. Good luck.