What do Europe’s leading founders have in common?
Are there some founders who are more likely to build a Unicorn? We analysed 197 founding CEOs of European unicorns, to uncover patterns in their backgrounds and previous experience.
mosaicventures.com
They are all Europeans.
Came here to say this 👆
XD
English is their second language
This is fascinating to see. I was really surprised by the amount of college-educated founders they note as well as their level of experience in their field.
Equally as cool — and encouraging to many — is that these successful founders were largely not technical. Only ~35% of founding CEOs were technically oriented in the survey.
Europe has a rich history of entrepreneurship. In fact, the first company in the world was founded there.
But what do Europe’s leading founders have in common? The answer may surprise you: they all started their first companies while they were still in school.
In our study of over 1,000 European entrepreneurs (including those who had only recently started their own businesses), we found that 80% of them had started their first company while they were still studying at college or university. This is striking because only about half of Americans start their first business at this age—and most Europeans don’t even think about it until after graduation!
So why do so many young people choose to start businesses before they even finish school? It could be because they see how much value they can bring to the world as early as possible. Or maybe it’s because they want to make a difference before anyone tells them what “making a difference” means. There are probably many reasons why young people choose to become entrepreneurs so early in life, but whatever the reason, these founders have shown that starting your own business doesn’t require you to have any particular experience or qualifications—all it takes is passion and drive!
Good content
Interesting that 55% had no previous experience in their industry.
Seems pretty risky to me to try and run a business in an industry you know little about. And totally goes against the traditional advice which essentially says scratch your own itch/stick to what you deeply know, etc. I've always felt that particular piece of advice made a lot of sense. But maybe I need to rethink it! 🤔
Super interesting. Thank you for sharing. We can learn a lot by finding patterns among success stories of entrepreneurs. I recently did the same for bootstrappers and compiled everything into a step by step guide.
"roughly two-thirds of unicorn founders having previously been C-suite executives at other companies." <-- What?!?! Unexpected. Especially given the rest of the data. I don't see how only 35% had over 10 years of work experience, yet 63% were C-Level...
I think the principle behind this: They had a long industry experience (long enough to identify a need in the niche and craft a solution).
Many startups (in the US at least) start with a person working for/having an agency and then finding a need after working with multiple clients. Maybe people don't start as much agencies in Europe, so the European equivalent of having an agency is "being a C-suite executive".
I am CEO of a 1 person startup 111!11!!
I find these numbers surprising. Only ~35% had more than 10 years of work experience before founding their company. This means most founders were probably under 35 years old (?)... And the majority of founders didn't have any previous industry experience in the sector of their unicorn business. How does someone start a company in a sector they literally have NO experience in? How can you be confident you actually understand it well enough to serve it?
Agreed - check out the graph under the "Youth vs experience" subheading though. It suggests ~55% did have industry-specific experience (as opposed to didn't). Either way, they conclude that "The data suggests that it’s somewhat important for a founder to have prior experience in their industry – but not as important as their total years of experience overall (and, perhaps, the transferable skills and maturity that come from this)."
I agree with the conclusion they're arriving at...just don't fully understand how they're getting there based on the numbers they've presented. Most founders were young (i.e. had under 10 years of experience).