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05.2.11

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It’s also interesting to explore the extent to which the alumni founders built companies within the same country as the HQ country of their ‘parent’ company. In other words, how many ex-Spotifiers have founded a company in Sweden? This lens reveals some interesting differences. While 65% of the founders that have spun out of German success stories have gone on to found their startup in Germany, this is just 52% for the UK and 50% Sweden and even lower for Denmark. This can be explained by the fact that certain companies built their talent base in a more geographically concentrated way with a large share of talent located in one country, while others built their employee bases in a more distributed way across many different locations. Skype, for example, famously was built as a European company with a meaningful presence in multiple cities, such as London and Tallinn.

Share of founders (%) who started their company in the same country as $5B+ company

Source:
Note:
Ex-operators of a selection of 24 companies who currently self identify as "founder" or "co-founder," as of October 2020.