Report by KAuf­mann Foun­da­tion Anatomy of an Entrepreneur

The very def­i­n­i­tion of an entre­pre­neur is for many some­one who sim­ply goes their own way, and define their own path to success.

And no ven­ture, and no entre­pre­neur, is pre­cisely like the other. But why do some make it and oth­ers, in spite of the best of inten­tions, do not?

I came across the 2009 report “The Anatomy of an Entre­pre­neur” by the Kauf­mann Foun­da­tion, based on a sur­vey of 549 com­pany founders across a vari­ety of indus­tries. The study seeks insights into high-growth founders’ moti­va­tions and their socio-economic, edu­ca­tional, and famil­ial back­grounds. Key find­ings are sum up what suc­cess­ful entre­pre­neurs seem to have in com­mon, in terms of back­ground, level of edu­ca­tion and motivation.

As an entre­pre­neur in the start­ing blocks of scal­ing up my busi­ness, I was of course curi­ous to see if I fit­ted the pic­ture and have what it takes.….

So here goes:

The aver­age and median age of com­pany founders when they started their cur­rent com­pa­nies was 40.

Tick! OK, I was 35. Not too far off the mark.

95.1 per­cent of respon­dents them­selves had earned bachelor’s degrees, and 47 per­cent had more advanced degrees.

Tick! With a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree under my belt, I fall in the lat­ter category.

52 per­cent said they ranked among the top 10 per­cent in High School. 

Yes Sir. I did. Can’t deny I was one of those book­worms with the glasses. Quite sur­pris­ing find­ing though, I had the stereo­type idea of the free-thinking entre­pre­neur that went so much against author­ity when grow­ing up, that his or her tal­ent wasn’t seen in school.

Less than 1 per­cent came from extremely rich or extremely poor back­grounds.

Tick! I cer­tainly lacked noth­ing when grow­ing up, and got the chance to travel, study, play and sport. But extremely rich: no. Extremely poor: luck­ily for me, no.  

15.2% of founders had a sib­ling that pre­vi­ously started a business.

Tick! My  brother has a rent-a-doctor busi­ness, Addoc, that he started a few years’ ear­lier than I took the plunge. For him, it is a side­job next to his ‘day job’ as a sur­geon, but nev­er­the­less, his ambi­tion and guts cer­tainly inspired me. 

69.9 per­cent of respon­dents indi­cated they were mar­ried when they launched their first busi­ness.

Tick again. Yes, I was mar­ried and I can’t stress enough that with­out the sup­port — and salary, let’s be hon­est — of my hus­band Han ten Broeke, I would never have been able to even think about quit­ting my job to start­ing develop a prod­uct full time. And those times when things seem to not go my way no mat­ter how hard I try, he is the one who inspires me to take that extra step. Again, again and again.

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.

This cer­tainly chal­lenges the stereo­type of the entre­pre­neur­ial worka­holic with no time for a family.

As far as I am con­cerned: Tick again. Stronger: with­out my daugh­ter, there would never have been a busi­ness idea. Thus — no busi­ness.
Hav­ing a child also made me long for more flex­i­bil­ity in my pro­fes­sional life. Hav­ing a busi­ness does not mean work­ing fewer hours, for sure, but I can much more eas­ily com­bine this work­load with fam­ily.

The major­ity of the entre­pre­neurs in the sam­ple were ser­ial entre­pre­neurs. The aver­age num­ber of busi­nesses launched by respon­dents was approx­i­mately 2.3.

Nope, here I don’t fit in. With a past as a diplo­mat, I was about as far from an entre­pre­neur one could come, I guess, when I started this ven­ture. Let’s hope this is not an indi­ca­tion that I have 2.3 busi­nesses to go before I may count myself successful.….!

74.8 per­cent indi­cated desire to build wealth as an impor­tant moti­va­tion in becom­ing an entre­pre­neur.

Oups. Tough one. Hand on my heart, I found it so dif­fi­cult — in the begin­ning — to admit that yes.… I WANT TO MAKE MONEY! Why? After 10 years in devel­op­ment aid, it was very hard to wear the hat of some­one who thinks in terms of profit. It’s sim­ply a bit of a dirty char­ac­ter­is­tic in my old cir­cles. Also, Mum­my­Mug of course has a higher ben­e­fit than being a money maker: I sin­cerely do it also for the kids that will be saved the pain of scald­ing burns, if their par­ents are smart enough to use my inven­tion.  but this said, and cer­tainly since I have investors on board, and since I real­ize how enor­mously hard it is to make that profit: yes, I want to make money. And yes, if I do: I will have deserved it! 

Only 4.5 per­cent said the inabil­ity to find tra­di­tional employ­ment was an impor­tant fac­tor in start­ing a business.

Tick tick. I left my life­time safe employ­ment at the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion for my dream.No lack of employ­ment in the past thus!

Entre­pre­neurs are usu­ally bet­ter edu­cated than their parents.

Nope, I’m not! very proud that my father has even two degrees — in busi­ness admin­stra­tion and in med­i­cine. My mother is not far behind with an advanced teach­ing degree.

Entre­pre­neur­ship doesn’t always run in the fam­ily. More than half (51.9 per­cent) of respon­dents were the first in their fam­i­lies to launch a business.

I kind of am. My father is since a few years work­ing as an inde­pen­dent con­sul­tant, after he got tired of the real­i­ties of employ­ment in the pub­lic health­care in Swe­den. But while I grew up, my par­ents were both work­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor and I’m the first one try­ing entre­pre­neur­ship at the scale Mum­my­Mug nec­es­sar­ily entails.  

The major­ity of respon­dents (75.4 per­cent) had worked as employ­ees at other com­pa­nies for more than six years before launch­ing their own com­pa­nies.

Tick and no tick! Does 10 years’ work expe­ri­ence, albeit in a very dif­fer­ent field and for a pub­lic insti­tu­tion count.…. ?

Last but not least: Net­works count. Pro­fes­sional net­works were impor­tant to the suc­cess of the cur­rent busi­nesses for 73 per­cent of the entre­pre­neurs in the study. In com­par­i­son, 62 per­cent felt the same way about per­sonal networks.

Cer­tainly agree. Net­works are every­thing. With­out them, you don’t get for­ward and you have noth­ing to fall back on when need be.

All in all — that’s quite encour­ag­ing, actu­ally. At least if I can prove to make some­thing out of this good start in life that I got ;-)
Who lives will see…

And in the mean­time, tell me: what is your out­look?

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you sub­scribe to my RSS feed!