Scaling startups create Europe's most successful founders, Antler finds

Research published today by global early-stage VC firm Antler reveals that the single most important decision a founder can make is which company they work at before building their own, and specifically, whether that company is actively scaling from Seed to Series C stage whilst they are there.

The report, Europe’s Growth Stage Founder Factories,  which analyses  51,722 European seed-stage companies, finds that working at a startup as it scales from Seed to Series C is the single strongest predictor of founding success.

Founders who did so are nearly twice as likely to build startups that reach Series A. No other previous employment or experience comes close. 

The research analyses startups in the UK, Germany, France and Sweden that raised a seed round between 2010 and 2021 and finds that, on average, 23 per cent of European startups secure Series A funding. 

The growth stage founder advantage

However, for startups run by founders who previously had direct experience working at a startup whilst it scaled from Seed to Series C, that figure increases to 45.6 per cent - a +22.6 percentage-point lift. 

In contrast, Big Tech experience produces exactly the same conversion rate uplift as working at a seed-stage startup - 33 per cent. In other words, the data suggests that early-stage startup experience is an advantage equal to being an ex-Googler. 

Founders in Germany who had previously worked at growth-stage companies are the most likely to successfully build their own startups to Series A (50.9 per cent). 

The importance of staying the distance

The research shows that nothing matches the hands-on experience of working at a startup whilst it scales. Founders who joined an employer at seed or pre-seed stage but left before significant growth successfully went on to raise Series A rounds themselves in 33.7 per cent of cases. 

However, founders who joined at Seed stage or earlier, then stayed at their employer long enough to see it raise a Series B or above, went on to build startups that convert their own Series A at 55.3 per cent — nearly double the baseline. 

The real founder factories

Global founder factories creating startups in Europe: 

1. LiveRamp - United States - 10 founders - 90.0 per cent went on to build startups that reached Series
2. AImprobable - United Kingdom - 8 founders - 87.5 per cent
3. Withings - France - 10 founders - 70.0 per cent
4. Zenefits - United States - 22 founders - 68.2 per cent
5. Indiegogo - United States - 12 founders - 66.7 per cent
6. Dropbox - United States - 45 founders - 62.2 per cent
7. Atlassian - Australia - 16 founders - 56.2 per cent
8. GitHub - United States - 15 founders - 46.7 per cent
9. Klarna - Sweden - 14 founders - 42.9 per cent
10. Riot Games - United States - 26 founders - 42.3 per cent
    

Christoph Klink, Partner at Antler, contends that the report shows that the most important decision a founder can make is not which university they attend or which famous company they join. 

“It is whether they were inside a company as it was actively scaling — navigating the fundraising pressure, the hiring pace, the product decisions made under scrutiny. 

That experience predicts founding success better than any other signal we tested, and it produces more than double the lift of working at Google or Meta.”

He asserts that this is genuinely good news for Europe:

“Yes, we have a generation of unicorns producing founders, but we also have a vibrant early-stage ecosystem that is giving future founders the best possible training ground.

The flywheel is spinning faster than we realised. The task for Europe's investors is to update their filters to find them, back them, and back them early."