What is the business model for your startup?
375 startupers
- Roland Berger and NUMA, a French accelerator, give an unprecedented overview of the French startup world (please download the study as a PDF for free below).
Why does one become an entrepreneur?
The startup founder is mostly driven by freedom-loving and a desire for autonomy at work. “Facing the challenges”, “changing the rules”, “being independent” and “creating my job” are the first four motivations in choosing entrepreneurship. These results trace the mirror negative vision of the classic business: a place of stress where it is difficult to carry out its projects.
Contrary to conventional thinking about geeks driven by a technical concept and ignoring almost everything of the market, half of startups founders were primarily motivated by responding to a growing market. Only 36% have a technical innovation they want to value and develop. This “sense of market” is reflected in the startupers’ skills: business and finance come first (34%), followed by marketing and communication (25%) while technical development comes third (24%), followed distantly by the design and product development.
"Portrait-robot"
The French startuper’s profile could be summarized as: a young thirty year-old man, graduated from a business school, who has met its co-founders during his studies. Indeed, 81% of startup creators are men. 60% are between 25 and 34 year-old. But the age of 25 account for only 15%.
Startups founders are very qualified: 46% come from an engineering or business school. The share of business school graduates is higher among younger creators of startups. Friendship and studies’ networks are responsible for half of the projects. Professional relationships (17%) or related to the world of entrepreneurship (5%) are far less represented.