What does the founder of a tech startup look like? Not like the photo to on the right!
Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times on a study by researchers at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The average founder is 38, with a master’s degree and 16 years of work experience.
And while only 12 percent of current founders are women, when the researchers searched for potential founders based on matches with other characteristics of successful founders, 20 percent of the people they found were women. “If you look at just the professional histories of the people who got funded, then it suggests people who share those histories are much more diverse than the people who get funded.”
“It’s true that start-up investing will never be a science. It depends too much on timing, luck and human judgment. But a more diverse set of founders might be financed by doing more than waiting for a kid in a hoodie to show up at the door.”
Read more here.