Party Time

Teaming up with Bloomberg Beta, the ‘startup signals tracker’ Mattermark studied 1.5m budding entrepreneurs in the US to see who was likely to be a startup founder.

Below are the six surprising facts they discovered – I have to confess pretty much all six surprised me. I wonder what Berlin Startup Ranking will find out about London startups, when it launches in the capital in the next few weeks?

• 38% of venture-backed founders are over 40 years old

• Only 15% of venture-backed founders have a Computer Science degree

• Management consultants are more than 2x more likely to be venture-backed founders than engineers

• 43% of venture backed founders worked at a venture-backed company immediately before founding

• Two thirds of venture-backed founders were not in a senior leadership position prior to founding

• Contrary to conventional wisdom, being “stuck” in the same company or position for a long time (even a decade) does not diminish your likelihood of becoming a founder