Here’s the dream startup founder: it’s a she, and she’s young, Ivy League-educated, an alum of a top tech company, and has a co-founder. Those are the characteristics shared by venture firm First Round Capital’s most successful companies.
First Round published a report Wednesday analyzing 300 companies it has invested in since 2005 to find what works, and what doesn’t. Some of its better-known investments include furniture seller One Kings Lane, glasses retailer Warby Parker and car service Uber. But like all VCs, it also has had misses like recently-shuttered home services company HomeJoy.
The best indicators of success are where founders were educated and where they previously worked. Companies with at least one founder that attended an Ivy League school, MIT, CalTech or Stanford performed 220% better than average. Meanwhile startups with a founder that hails from Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, or Twitter performed 160% better...Read more in the WSJ.
...Companies with at least one female founder performed 63% better than companies with all male founding teams, according to the study. In an indication of how few companies have female founders, First Round said three of its top 10 investments had a woman on board.
