The ideal founder's background 💯
by Luis Llorens Gonzales, Principal at Plug & Play Tech Center.
Guest post by Luis Llorens Gonzales, Principal at Plug & Play Tech Center. | Originally published on Learning VC💡
In this post, we will delve deeper into the IDEAL BACKGROUND of an ENTREPRENEUR.
After my experience at Itnig and Plug and Play, I have had the opportunity to meet thousands of entrepreneurs, some of them very successful, and others who have had to close their businesses.
Along the way, I have invested in several companies and learned a lot from the founders. Although it's difficult to find the secret formula📜 to identify successful entrepreneurs, I have tried to compile some common personality traits:
Resilience⚒️: Recovering from failures and setbacks, using these experiences as learning opportunities to improve and succeed.
Flexibility🔃: Adaptable and willing to change their plans based on new information or changing circumstances to make their ideas feasible. They have the capacity to listen to customers and pivot quickly.
Conviction🫡: A high level of credibility and authority can be important when building a reputation and gaining the trust of customers, investors, and even employees.
Ambition🔝: Desire to do something big and have an impact in society, scale at a high rates and set long-term goals.
As an investor, you want the entrepreneur to be deeply committed to what they are doing, without a backup plan, and truly betting everything on his venture.
In my opinion, it's not about whether you have a background in consultancy, M&A, scale up or any other field. What matters more are the traits you have developed and the experiences you have gained in your career.
Successful entrepreneurs have often held jobs in their industry before starting their own companies. Having deep expertise and market knowledge in a specific field is valuable for reducing risks and avoiding mistakes.
On the other hand, I have seen many young founders with minimal or no prior experience who have managed to assemble strong teams and build successful businesses.
How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?
According to several studies led by HBR, MIT, and the Kauffman Foundation, the average age of a tech startup founder is 40-45 years old. The vast majority (over 85%) of tech founders held bachelor’s degrees, and over 25% held master’s degrees.
However, from my own analysis navigating through 50+ tier 1 tech companies, I found that the founders of the outlier companies are YOUNGER than the average tech entrepreneur.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen were just 20 and 22, respectively, when they founded Microsoft in 1975, Steve Jobs was just 21 when he founded Apple, Jeff Bezos was 30 when he founded Amazon… Extremely talented entrepreneurs may have unusual acumen — allowing them to succeed when they are very young — yet still see greater success as they age.
Unfortunately, over the past several years, men have outnumbered women among the population of new startup founders by a ratio of nearly six to one. In 2023, that disparity worsened. Just 13.2% of founders last year were women, down from 15.1% in 2022, marking the lowest annual figure according to Carta.
Moreover, according to Pitchbook, female-only founded startups raised just 2% of total U.S. VC funding in 2023, the lowest since 2016.
I hope the number of women (co)founders👩 increases, enriching the entrepreneurial ecosystem with diverse perspectives.
You are doing an excellent job bringing together the ecosystem🙌