Web3 Founders Background Check: Ivy League and Big Tech Dominant, American Serial Entrepreneurs Take the Lead
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Web3 Founders Background Check: Ivy League and Big Tech Dominant, American Serial Entrepreneurs Take the Lead
Where do serial entrepreneurs in the Web3 space come from?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insights
Recently, the Contora team conducted an interesting investigation into founders in the web3/crypto space. They selected the top 1,500 projects in the web3/crypto sector from Coinmarketcap and CB, identified their founders, and collected information about each founder—such as work experience, educational background, entrepreneurial history—from LinkedIn profiles and other sources. They then standardized and quantified each metric, assigning every founder a score from 0 to 100.
The sample size is large and the data extensive—while we can't yet grasp the full picture, some intriguing insights emerge:
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Average company age — 4 years and 4 months
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Average team size — 46 employees
Where do founders come from?
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United States — 555, far ahead
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United Kingdom — 184
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Singapore — 123
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UAE — 105
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Canada — 78
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India — 75
Followed by Switzerland, China, Germany, and Australia. But I have an unproven hypothesis—perhaps many Chinese entrepreneurs are categorized under Singapore or the United States.
Which schools did the founders graduate from?
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Harvard University — 33
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Stanford — 31
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University of California — 26
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MIT — 23
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National University of Singapore — 18
Where did founders previously work?
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Google
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IBM
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Microsoft
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Accenture
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Deloitte
Additional insights:
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44% are serial founders (1013)
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66% have held senior positions (1535)
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24% are immigrants (562)
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10% hold PhDs (229)
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17% graduated from top-tier U.S. universities (404)
Based on these preliminary findings, here are my conclusions:
(1) Americans currently dominate the web3 startup landscape;
(2) Web3 entrepreneurship is becoming increasingly elite—highly educated individuals, serial entrepreneurs, and former employees of Silicon Valley tech giants are now the dominant profile;
(3) Pure grassroots opportunities may be shrinking.
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