The winning founder

I analysed the background in terms of education, business experience and age of 100 founders of European unicorns (companies valued at over $1bn) and the result are pretty indicative of a certain type of a successful founder (for sure there are tales in the curve but the trend is pretty clear).

- 85% of unicorn founders have a university degree and 23% a Master degree (the story of a university drop-out successful founders not really stand out when I analysed the data);

- the average age at which a founder starts a future unicorn is 33 years old;

- 10% of the unicorn founders have worked and Goldman Sachs and 7% at McKinsey;

- Oxford University is the school that create the highest number of unicorn founders (7%), followed by LSE (6%) and Cambridge University (5%).

Data are below.