My First Guest Post on TechCrunch – Why You’re A Startup Founder: Nature and Nurture

Like most startup founders, I wished for some TechCrunch coverage.   I’m still waiting on that, but I suppose I’ll take guest posting for now. 🙂  So I’m excited to share my first post– Why You’re A Startup Founder: Nature and Nurture.   In this study, I looked at the effect of birth order on the likelihood of becoming a startup founder, as well as other influences such as having family members that were entrepreneurs.  Thanks to all who participated!

I had to do an infographic too (aka excuse to draw stick figures) so here it is 🙂  Feel free to share it!

Topline findings:

• Yes birth order does have an influence.   I compared the birth order distribution of the survey respondents with census information for similar age groups to account for the fact that there are naturally going to be fewer third-borns than second-borns, etc….
• 46% of startup founders were first-born children (excluding only children) while first-born children (excluding only children) represented approximately 30% of the general population.  The over-indexing of first-born children as startup founders was reinforced by looking at results from two-child families.  Instead of a 50/50 split, first-born children represented 62% of startup founders from two-child families, compared to 38% for second-borns.
• Startup founders tend to overachieve and be more active with certain activities than the average person.  Here’s a chart comparing some of the results for survey founders versus the general population:

Thanks again, all of you who participated in the first survey!   I’m looking into the types of adversity faced by startup founders while growing up next, so if anyone is interested who didn’t participate in my study before, I’d love to ask you some questions here.

Comments

comments