Unicorn CEOs: What did they do before?

Many people feel drawn to starting a company. You get to be your own boss, decide your own hours, and bring something from an idea to a big company. Eventually, that company continues to grow, from seed to Series A, from a unicorn to a public company, until it ultimately fails, IPOs, or is acquired.

Recently, coupled with the trend of companies staying private longer, there has been a new type of startup emerging: unicorns. These startups are private companies valued at more than $1 billion. They are becoming more common.

As someone who is potentially interested in founding a company that grows to that size, I was curious to see the background of the founders. At what type of jobs did they previously work? What were the company categories? Do they have any similarities to the companies they founded?

I looked at 30 different well-known unicorns, ranging from Robinhood to 23andme. The person from that company I analyzed was the CEO when the company was founded. In some instances, the company has two CEOs, like Warby Parker. With regard to their previous jobs, I only analyzed their three previous jobs before founding the Unicorn. I didn’t analyze internships, only full-time jobs.

Company Category

Unsurprisingly, the category that the most Unicorn CEOs used to work in was Internet and Software Services. Many of these people then founded the Unicorns that focus on Internet and Software Services. This type of background can be very helpful because so many companies utilize software in their offerings and day-to-day operations. Clearly, many Unicorn CEOs have benefited from a software background, but the wide variety of industries listed in the graph illustrate the many different backgrounds.

After Internet and Software Services, the next most common industries where the CEOs had worked were similar, including Management Consulting, Venture Capital, and Investment Banking. These types of jobs help prepare younger workers to be startup CEOs because they have the opportunity to interact with important leadership at various companies and develop the necessary skills to be a CEO. Some of these skills include leadership, communication, business analysis, and operations/logistics.

Type of Job

As this chart and the previous analysis indicates, clearly it is important to be in a management role before founding a unicorn. 64% of the CEOs were in leadership positions at other companies before starting their own. Being in that role enables them to develop skills that are essential to being a Unicorn CEO, like strategy and operations at scale.

In addition to management roles, a lot of Unicorn CEOs previously were in an engineering role. This background is very beneficial, especially at technology-focused startups where a tech-literate CEO can accelerate the development of the product and help avoid confusion over the product due to a lack of understanding about it.

Final Analysis

While it is not possible to predict who will become the next Unicorn CEO, there are some trends that illustrate what skills are beneficial to becoming a Unicorn CEO. First, it is important to have management/leadership skills. Second, having previously started a company helps as well. Finally, being part of Management Consulting, Venture Capital, and Investment Banking industry before founding can help develop the skills needed to be a CEO. You don’t need these skills to become the founder of a Unicorn CEO, but if this is a career path you are interested in then it would be beneficial to develop the aforementioned skills and gain experience in certain industries.

Miscellaneous Notes (Cool Stuff I Found that Couldn’t Make It in the Article)

• Many had co-founded or founded a business before starting their Unicorn. Some were quite successful, like Stewart Butterfield founding Flickr before Slack, but most of their previous startups were not unicorns
• Most common previous jobs were Founder/Co-Founder, CEO, and Consultant
• 92% of the original founders are still CEO of the company
• The average number of jobs before being a Unicorn CEO was 3
• 45% worked at or founded a company in the same category
• Epic Games has been around the longest and was founded in 1991