You can be a solo founder AND raise from venture capitalists.
But in certain sectors it's less common.
Chart below looks at over 9,000 startups currently using Carta for their cap table. These companies are between Priced Seed and Series B in their funding journey.
Purple bars = percent of these companies in each industry that have 4 or 5 founders.
Yellow bars = percent of these companies in each industry that have solo founders.
Overall, even though it's not shown in the graph, most companies have 2 or 3 founders. That's the typical founding team size.
But in the "hard tech" industries like Biotech or Hardware, larger founding teams of 4 or more are far more common. Just guessing as to the why here, but I'd expect the technical expertise necessary to build new drugs or new physical products is higher and perhaps the business founders come with complementary experience.
So which industries have the highest percentage of solo founder companies in early-stage VC?
1. Consumer (25%) 2. Medical Devices (23% - and surprising!) 3. Fintech (20%)
Give me a shout in the comments if your industry isn't on here - or if you'd like some data on a specific stage.
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#cartadata #startups #founders #solofounder #venturecapital
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