By NICOLE KOBIE of Wired
Forget rags-to-riches stories and tales of university dropouts like Mark Zuckerberg. Read the bio of the average British startup founder, and a few names keep popping up: Cambridge, Oxford and management company McKinsey. Coming from money makes it easier to make money, but a lack of financial diversity among founders could be holding back British tech. Put less carefully, are British startups too posh — and does it mean we're missing out by reserving tech roles for the upper crust?
Some startup founders admit the benefit of their privilege — though not all. While failing to pip Boris Johnson to PM, Jeremy Hunt spoke about the trials of starting Hotcourses – the education startup he co-founded in 1996 – saying it was a "daily grind to stay alive, pay your bills," despite his wealthy family background. Others are a bit more woke. Improbable founder Herman Narula acknowledged that early funding from family and friends totalled £1.2 million, with the team working out of the family home, a grade-two listed mansion known as Hyver Hall.
When women, black or ethnic minorities, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds are left out of the tech industry — and they are — the technology industry is missing out on talented people with good ideas. Finding good staff is hard, but it's even harder when you ignore the majority of the population, and coming from wealth doesn't mean you're better at starting a business or have a more technical mind.
To address the posh gap, money needs to be made available at earlier stages, for those without family connections, though crowdfunding, startup ISAs and loans can help. Accelerators and other startup programmes need to pay a living wage, so people without access to the bank of mum and dad can still afford to eat and pay rent, and universities need to do more to educate a wider range of students from all backgrounds.
That's money. Another part of the privilege equation is education. Though the world of British startups is swamped with founders who came up from private schools and Oxbridge, it's less so than other professional industries, according to a report from The Sutton Trust called Elitist Britain, which looked at the impact of independent schools and Oxford and Cambridge.