When you have 120 million people in your database, the urge to mine the data is irresistible. So LinkedIn senior research scientist Monica Rogati dove into a sample of 15,000 startup entrepreneurs lurking in the file and produced some counter-intuitive findings.
Turns out founders are older than you think -- some of them anyway. The media stars (Zuckerberg, et. al.) may be mostly 20-somethings, but that group represents only 34% of company founders. The more aged 30-39 year olds represent 40%; nearly over-the-hill 40-49 year-olds are 20%; and bless them, the over 50s account for 5%. Go oldsters! (Teenagers are 1%). The takeaway? "It's never too late to start a company," Rogati says.
Founders and entrepreneurs have a propensity to attend business schools (whether they graduate or not is another matter). And while they don't always go to business school, when they do they prefer Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Wharton, Columbia, Babson, Virginia and Cornell, in that order. That's a bit different from the ranking compiled by U.S. News & World Report (apologies to Chicago, Northwestern, NYU and Yale).
Of course, entrepreneurs are only as good as their networks and "the mentors they need to be successful," Rogati says. She found that founders are disproportionately (relative to other LinkedIn members) connected to venture capitalists, online publishers, people in the Internet industries, and recruiters. What does she infer from this? It makes sense that founders are close to people with money; that they seek to influence the media and bloggers (online publishers); and that they cultivate recruiters...perhaps they'll need them if their startups implode.
For more on the LinkedIn methodology, click .here.