Following are highlights from Survey and Study by Vivek Wadhwa & others: Anatomy of an Entrepreneur I: Family Background and Motivation
For this project, we surveyed 549 company founders in a variety of industries, including aerospace and defense, computer and electronics, health care, and
services.
Company founders tend to be middle-aged and well-educated, and did better in high school than in college
• The average and median age of company founders in our sample when they started their current companies was 40.
• 75 percent ranked their academic performance among the top 30 percent of the high school class, with a majority (52.4 percent) ranking their performance among the top 10 percent.
These entrepreneurs tend to come from middle-class or upper-lower-class backgrounds, and were better educated and more entrepreneurial than their parents
• 71.5 percent of respondents came from middle-class backgrounds (34.6 percent upper-middle class and
36.9 percent lower-middle class). Additionally, 21.8 percent said they came from upper-lower-class families (blue-collar workers in some form of
manual labor).
Most entrepreneurs are married and have children
• 69.9 percent of respondents indicated they were married when they launched their first business. An additional 5.2 percent were divorced, separated, or
widowed.
• 59.7 percent of respondents indicated they had at least one child when they launched their first business, and 43.5 percent had two or more
children.
• 52 percent of respondents had some interest in becoming an entrepreneur when they were in college, but 34.7 percent didn’t even think about it,
and 13.3 percent had little or no interest.
Motivations for becoming entrepreneurs: building wealth, owning a company, startup culture, and capitalizing on a business idea
Most had significant industry experience when starting their companies
• The majority of respondents (75.4 percent) had worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own companies. Nearly half (47.9 percent) launched their first companies with more than ten years of work experience.