What makes a Top
100 founding team?
Taking a look at the size and composition of founding teams from the Top 100.
Within the founding teams of the Top 100 we found that:
01
Cloud Challengers founders more frequently opted to share the journey with at least one other person
02
75% of companies had at least one technical co-founder
03
The representation of women in the Cloud Challengers cohort is consistent, if not slightly lower than, the broader ecosystem
The size of a co-founding team generally bears very little weight from an investor point of view, but it’s one of the most important decisions made in the formative days of a company. Considering the volatility of the current market, it’s unsurprising that most founders in the cohort have opted not to go solo.
Only 13 out of the 224 founders in our research built their company as a sole founder. This is significantly lower than a 2016 study of global data examining prevalence of sole founders that raised over $10M. In those companies, over 45% were sole founders.
It was most common to have two people on the co-founding team. On average, Cloud Challengers had 2.26 founders compared to a global average of 1.74.
62% of the sole founders were technical
Only 3 of the top 20 companies didn’t have any technical co-founders
75% of companies had at least one technical co-founder
Non-technical co-founding teams still account for a quarter of the top 100.
13 out of 100 companies showed gender diversity on their founding teams
Of the 13, three companies had solely female founding teams
This proportion is slightly lower than the overall European ecosystem. According to Pitchbook’s latest data, sole female founders account for 5.4% of all European VC deal flow and gender diverse teams account for almost 18% of all deals.
We still have a way to go. According to Pitchbook's data, the number of sole female teams has only gone up by 2% over the past decade.
