The key to success in start-ups is making sure you’re young, experienced and not the only founder. That’s the takeaway from a new survey conducted by SV Angel of successful start-ups. The survey, which has gotten response from 300 start-ups that have been funded by SV Angel, looked at what goes into a successful entrepreneur and what type of founder profile makes for success.
One could argue that the data provided has an obvious bias, given that it only documents companies that have made it past the hurdle of getting funding from SV Angels, and typically angels and venture capitalists subscribe to narrow views of what makes a successful founder. So based on this sample, the survey found that 90 percent of companies that had either a $ 500 million exit or a projected $ 500 million exit had repeat founders. For smaller companies with a real or projected $ 25 million exit, 63 percent were repeat founders. SV Angel’s Ron Conway ticked off a number of entrepreneurs who found success as repeat founders including Marc Andreessen, Evan Williams and Dennis Crowley. “The more experience the entrepreneurs have, the better,” he said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference.
While experience is an obvious plus, it also appears that younger entrepreneurs are having more success in larger exits, something that’s often odds with experience. According to the survey, 67 percent of founders of large $ 500 million companies were younger than 30. For smaller companies, it was more tilted toward older entrepreneurs with 53 percent of $ 25 million companies older than 30. It seems like the emerging profile of a successful founder is someone who has managed to gain a lot of experience while still being young enough to be patient and still embrace risk.
“Younger entrepreneurs are willing to slow grow their company and take more chances,” said Conway. “Facebook is a good example of that.”
Finally, it appears that co-founders are better for successful start-ups than single founders. The survey found that 89 percent of large companies had co-founders while 84 percent of smaller companies had more than one founder. Conway said it helps to have multiple founders who complement each other like Larry Page and Sergei Brin did at Google. We’ve also recently written about this why co-founders are favored.
SV Angel didn’t ask a specific question on the gender of founders but David Lee, managing member of SV Angel said 95 percent of respondents had male founders.
This is still just a slice of data from SV Angel and as I mentioned, some of this can be self-fulfilling prophesy. And there are plenty of examples of companies that have succeeded by bucking these trends. It still takes a smart team with a great vision and an ability to execute. And that can come from anywhere. But it’s interesting to note what’s gone into the success of some of SV Angel companies.
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