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Analysis of unicorn startup founders

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Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#31

Post by codingwagie »

gwbas1c wrote: post #27
codingwagie wrote: post #14

1. Went to a top school Prestigious people are essentially handed capital. This drives most of the funding at the very early stage. A random founder with no connections or background needs an MVP product with real traction, and even then may raise on worse terms than a stanford/harvard grad. Raising venture funding can be thought of as a career path. Its not entrepreneurship. VC backed founders are more similar to he…

I wouldn't look at that as a "rich get richer" situation. Spend some time with people who attended different calibers of schools, and you'll see that it's not quite so simple to explain, especially when you spend time listening to different peoples' insights about life, and their self discipline. (The kind of insights and discipline needed to start a successful company with VC money.) The schools aren't gatekeepers t…

I live in NYC and have raised capital/am part of social networks of founders in NYC. I have first hand experience with this, I understand the game really well.

The schools absolutely are gatekeepers.

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#32

Post by hnhg »

gwbas1c wrote: post #27
codingwagie wrote: post #14

1. Went to a top school Prestigious people are essentially handed capital. This drives most of the funding at the very early stage. A random founder with no connections or background needs an MVP product with real traction, and even then may raise on worse terms than a stanford/harvard grad. Raising venture funding can be thought of as a career path. Its not entrepreneurship. VC backed founders are more similar to he…

I wouldn't look at that as a "rich get richer" situation. Spend some time with people who attended different calibers of schools, and you'll see that it's not quite so simple to explain, especially when you spend time listening to different peoples' insights about life, and their self discipline. (The kind of insights and discipline needed to start a successful company with VC money.) The schools aren't gatekeepers t…

I have worked closely over the years with people from Ivy League/Oxbridge schools to small universities from developing countries and I would not put the people from the elite institutions at the top of the rankings of discipline or ability from my experience.

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#33

Post by Joker_vD »

waysa wrote: post #13
Kalanos wrote: post #11

LOL "Psychological Factors: No plan B + Unlimited self-belief + History of feeling like an imposter"

no sane person would start a company ;)

As a joke goes, an entrepreneur is someone who is willing to work unlimited hours, with no clearly specified days off, for wildly unsure income figures, just so they don't have to work 8 hours 5 days a week with 28 paid vacation days and a stable pay check.

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#34

Post by yobbo »

madamelic wrote: post #7

I would be very curious how this landscape changes when you don't consider VC funding as a necessary part of being a startup. I want to see how demographics change due to funding method. Another interesting point, and this is likely outside the scope you are wanting to do, is to do democraphics -> positive personal financial outcome (ie: people who successfully landed it). The past few years has shown it isn't diffic…

Elite schools could just mean "otherwise wealthy enough to take risks".

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#35

Post by sabbaticaldev »

codingwagie wrote: post #31
gwbas1c wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't look at that as a "rich get richer" situation. Spend some time with people who attended different calibers of schools, and you'll see that it's not quite so simple to explain, especially when you spend time listening to different peoples' insights about life, and their self discipline. (The kind of insights and discipline needed to start a successful company with VC money.) The schools aren't gatekeepers t…

I live in NYC and have raised capital/am part of social networks of founders in NYC. I have first hand experience with this, I understand the game really well. The schools absolutely are gatekeepers.

are you successful then? what unicorn are we talking about?

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#36

Post by gunapologist99 »

codingwagie wrote: post #22
madamelic wrote: post #7

I would be very curious how this landscape changes when you don't consider VC funding as a necessary part of being a startup. I want to see how demographics change due to funding method. Another interesting point, and this is likely outside the scope you are wanting to do, is to do democraphics -> positive personal financial outcome (ie: people who successfully landed it). The past few years has shown it isn't diffic…

The bet is that if they fund 20 Harvard grads, one of them might be like Gates. Even if the rest are duds. The math still kind of works out, they need an outlier.

> The math still kind of works out

How many Gates are there in a typical Harvard grad cohort? Are 5% of Harvard grads a Gates?

If we're looking at lightning strikes, it seems like we should look at some of the most successful tech CEO's in history, in no particular order.

Gates & Zuck - Harvard (Microsoft and Facebook; both dropped out by end of second year or earlier)

Larry Ellison (Oracle, third richest man in the world in 2000's and currently 9th richest) - dropped out of Univ Illinois and Chicago

Larry Page, Sergein Brin (Google, dropped out of Stanford)

Elon Musk (Tesla/SpaceX/X/PayPal/etc, richest man in world, attended Queen's and then transferred to ivy league U Penn, one of the very few that completed a degree, BS in both Physics and Econ)

Jeff Bezos (Amazon, second richest in world, earned BSE in EE/CS from Princeton, summa cum laude)

Steve Jobs (Apple, dropout Reed College)

Of course, these numbers have such a high p-value that really it amounts to nothing more than a guess or, at best, a hypothesis, and I get that you're just suggesting that those who both get admitted to Harvard and actually complete a full education there have much higher than average rates of being successful, but it seems that the extreme ends of such a graph end up being counter-intuitive, because:

From a very quick review of an admittedly hand-picked assortment of the very small number of "most" successful tech CEO's (whatever that might mean), we can identify a few common characteristics:

1. most did attend a university of varying quality.

2. A minority attended an elite school.

3. most did not complete even their second year.

There are a lot of things that can be read into this, but it does seem to be borne out across most less-regulated industries: founders tend to be smart enough to get into university but perhaps too impatient to stay in for the duration, but leaders of older companies (such as larger and public companies) tend to have at least a four-year degree, although I don't have any hard data about this (particularly because there seems to be a dearth of data for "successful" startup founders outside of the VC world, for any meaning of the word "success".)

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#37

Post by pragma_x »

yobbo wrote: post #34
madamelic wrote: post #7

I would be very curious how this landscape changes when you don't consider VC funding as a necessary part of being a startup. I want to see how demographics change due to funding method. Another interesting point, and this is likely outside the scope you are wanting to do, is to do democraphics -> positive personal financial outcome (ie: people who successfully landed it). The past few years has shown it isn't diffic…

Elite schools could just mean "otherwise wealthy enough to take risks".

This is how I interpret things. People from that kind of background are also notoriously well-connected, so attempting a startup early or mid career isn't going to damage their ability to go back to the job market. For the rest of us, that would take some explaining at the interview table.

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#38

Post by renewiltord »

gunapologist99 wrote: post #36
codingwagie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bet is that if they fund 20 Harvard grads, one of them might be like Gates. Even if the rest are duds. The math still kind of works out, they need an outlier.

> The math still kind of works out How many Gates are there in a typical Harvard grad cohort? Are 5% of Harvard grads a Gates? If we're looking at lightning strikes, it seems like we should look at some of the most successful tech CEO's in history, in no particular order. Gates & Zuck - Harvard (Microsoft and Facebook; both dropped out by end of second year or earlier) Larry Ellison (Oracle, third richest man in the…

Page and Brin dropped out of a Ph D program. They have Masters degrees.

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#39

Post by TrackerFF »

Couldn't find much (didn't look through the source reports) on socioeconomic background - any interesting statistics there?

There's a difference in "No plan B" if you have a family or network that you can fall back on, or if it means you'll end up as a homeless person.

Re: Analysis of unicorn startup founders

#40

Post by JumpCrisscross »

madamelic wrote: post #7

I would be very curious how this landscape changes when you don't consider VC funding as a necessary part of being a startup. I want to see how demographics change due to funding method. Another interesting point, and this is likely outside the scope you are wanting to do, is to do democraphics -> positive personal financial outcome (ie: people who successfully landed it). The past few years has shown it isn't diffic…

> how this landscape changes when you don't consider VC funding as a necessary part of being a startup

Unicorns are defined by scalability. There are scalable opportunities with low barriers to entry. But they tend to be hypercompetitive and thus a better domain for small business than unicorns. The moment you have barriers to entry and economies of scale you have a decisive advantage for the players with more capital. As such, when talking about unicorns, VC is a necessary condition. (VC firms may not be.)

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