Who Are You? Charting the Demographics of Venture-Backed Internet Startups

study in the first place arises from the importance of “human capital” in the venture capital community.

“When we ask venture capitalists what gets them excited about the young, emerging, and often unproven companies in which they invest, we never hear about deals and dollars,” the report says. “Rather the first answer is frequently ‘the team’ or ‘the founders.’ This demonstrates just how crucial human capital is in VC investment decision-making.”

So who are the venture-backed Internet startup founders of 2010? Here’s some breakout highlights:

—Most of them are white (87 percent). Only 1 percent are black, in comparison to the 11 percent share of African-Americans in the total U.S. population, and 12 percent are Asian—about triple the 4 percent that Asians represent in the general population.

Among the Asian founders, CB Insights reports that 54 percent are South Asian (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Butan, Maldives, and Sri Lanka) and 46 percent are East/Southeast Asian (Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines, China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia, Macau, and Hong Kong.)


Racial composition and median funding
Racial composition and median funding


—CB Insights also provided data for the three states that rank highest in venture-backed startups. In California, 18 percent of the startup founders included in the study are Asian and 82 percent are white. In Massachusetts, 87 percent of the founders are white and 13 percent Asian. In New York, 89 percent of the founders are white, while 11 percent are Asian. CB Insights also provides data for startup teams.

—With regard to age, CB Insights concludes that wunderkinds are not the norm, and the average founding team is 35 to 44 years old. While almost half of the founding teams fall within the 33 to 44 range, CB Insights says companies with an average age in the range of 26 to 34 have the highest median funding—$2.5 million versus $2.4 million for founding teams in the 45-54 age range.

—Data generated for the report also substantiates the mantra that venture capital investors back founders with experience, with 39 percent of the founders surveyed showing previous experience as CEOs or founders. More founders does not necessarily result in larger funding rounds, the report says.

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.