new kauffman foundation of entrepreneurship study profiles 549 business founders.
how do these highlights compare to you and your clients?
1. company founders tend to be middle-aged and well-educated, and did better in high school than in college
• the average and median age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40.
• 95.1 percent of respondents themselves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 percent had more advanced degrees.
• 75 percent ranked their academic performance among the top 30 percent of the high school class, with a majority (52.4 percent) ranking their performance among the top 10 percent.
• 67 percent ranked their academic performance among the top 30 percent of their undergraduate class, but a smaller percentage (37.5 percent) ranked their performance among the top 10 percent.
2. entrepreneurs tend to come from middle-class or upper-lower-class backgrounds, and are better educated and more entrepreneurial than their parents
• 71.5 percent came from middle-class backgrounds (34.6 percent upper-middle class and 36.9 percent lower-middle class). additionally, 21.8 percent said they came from upper-lower-class families (blue-collar workers in some form of manual labor).
• less than 1 percent came from extremely rich or extremely poor backgrounds
• the average birth order of respondents in their family was 2.2 and the average number of siblings was 3.1.
• the fathers of 50.1 percent of the company founders held bachelor’s or advanced degrees, as did 33.9 percent of the mothers.
• more than half (51.9 percent) of respondents were the first in their families to launch a business. only 38.8 percent, 6.9 percent, and 15.2 percent, respectively, had a father, mother, or siblings who had previously started businesses.
3. most entrepreneurs are married and have children
• 69.9 percent of respondents indicated they were married when they launched their first business. an additional 5.2 percent were divorced, separated, or widowed.
• 59.7 percent of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5 percent had two or more children.
4. early interest and propensity to start companies
• 52 percent of respondents had some interest in becoming an entrepreneur when they were in college, but 34.7 percent didn’t even think about it, and 13.3 percent had little or no interest. those from lower-upper-class backgrounds were more likely to have been extremely interested in starting a business than the average (25 percent vs. 18.5 percent).
• of the 24.5 percent who indicated that they were “extremely interested” in becoming entrepreneurs during college, 47.1 percent went on to start more than two companies (as compared to 32.9 percent of the overall sample).
• the majority of the entrepreneurs in our sample were serial entrepreneurs. the average number of businesses launched by respondents was approximately 2.3; 41.4
free download: get the full study, “the anatomy of an entrepreneur: family background and motivation,” as an instant download here (pdf, 24 pages).