European Tech Startups Succeed: An Inside Look
Only 21% of founders are female, although there are more and more women founding startups and taking C-suite and board level positions. Despite significant progress with diversity initiatives, 84% of founders are White\Caucasian.
Most founders are fairly young, with 40% aged between 26-30 years old, 7% are over 40. But in France only, as many as 20% are over 40. Across Europe, despite the prevalence of younger founders, those with more experience often raise more money.
Interestingly, typical startup founders often have experience with U.S. companies: Microsoft, Google, and BCG seed the top ten companies founders. Among the European companies, Nokia is the highest-ranked and Rocket Internet is the only Europe grown company that makes the Top 15 globally.
Starting Capital Investments: how is funding raised?
50% of first-time founders set-up and launch companies with less than $25,000. However, serial successful founders tend to invest much more substantial amounts: 32% of experienced founders are ready to raise and spend more than $500,000 to support a new startup.
Women are braver and for the first time, are ready to start, either without any money or less than $25,000. According to the ethnic self-identifying data, 60% of Black/African/Caribbean started their business with no starting capital or with less than $25,000. If we are looking at the financial sources, we can see that the overwhelming majority of founders use their own savings to launch company.