Are tech behemoths like Google or Amazon really the most places to find the next generation of promising entrepreneurs? Not according to today’s founders.
For its fourth annual State of Startups survey, the early-stage venture capital fund First Round Capital polled 529 venture-backed startup founders in the US, asking them a wide range of questions about the entrepreneurial life. Among the more provocative questions posed by First Round was: “Which US based company is most likely to spin out the next generation of notable founders over the next five years?”
Despite its brief but tumultuous history, Uber, the scandal-weary ride-sharing behemoth formerly led by Travis Kalanick and now racing to go public, was the most popular response. (First Round was one of the earliest investors in Uber, though it says the survey did not encourage respondents to select from First Round-funded companies in any way.)
Below, you can see the 11 companies most commonly predicted by survey respondents to spin out high-potential founders. Notably, Google, which has yielded crops of budding entrepreneurs in the past, is not listed:
The survey findings were released in December 2018. Demographically, the respondents were 17.4% female, 82.6% male, at companies founded within the past 11 years ago, with head counts ranging from less than six people to more than 250 people. The most popular sectors represented in the survey were enterprise (35.2%), consumer (15.2%), financial tech (12.1%), and healthcare (10.8%). You can read the full results of the 2018 State of Startups survey here.