The environment in which innovation is born has its own specifics. Startups are no longer garage companies and are not usually founded by people during or instead of school. The environment is maturing, and with it the founders of fast-growing companies. Check out interesting facts you may not know about Czech startups.
1. Startups are not just young visionaries
It sounds tempting, and many film adaptations confirm the stereotype of a young entrepreneur with a company founded instead of continuing his studies. But it is more of a fairy tale than a typical story. In the Czech Republic, the average founder of a startup is 32 years old when it starts. It takes another two years before he manages to achieve his first major investment with a product that works on the market. And before a startup reaches a significant investment stage, such as Series B, founders are on average 40 years old. The youngest entrepreneur ever to receive an investment in 2024 was exactly 20 years old. The oldest was 58.
2. Men still dominate
The startup scene remains predominantly male-dominated. Women make up only 7.7% of all Czech startup founders who received investment last year. The Czech Republic is significantly below average in this sense, but startups are also more of a male affair in the world. According to various studies, women found roughly 14 to 20 percent of startups. The share is slowly changing; in Europe, even when it comes to deep tech startups, their share should have doubled since 2011. Data for the Czech scene does not go back that far. And in 2023, the share of female founders was very similar to last year.
3. Prague is still the center of attention, other places may surprise you
More than 60% of Czech startups are headquartered in Prague, which has become the unwavering center of the Czech innovation scene. Brno has proven to be an important player in the technology sector, and last year it attracted founders as the second most suitable city for a startup headquarters with a share of 12.7%. However, the ranking is far from being copied by large Czech cities, with Czech startups preferring to establish their companies in San Francisco (6.3%) rather than Ostrava. Only then does the metropolis of the Moravian-Silesian Region come into play (3.8%), followed by Olomouc (2.5%) and London (2.5%).
4. Starting a startup is a team effort
The most common model of startup founders is pairs, which make up more than half of the cases (53.16%). Three-person teams and soloists are in second place (16.5%). Larger founding groups are more of an exception, but they still appear among the startups that receive investment every year.
5. The influence of universities is limited
Although universities around the world are incubators of innovation, they do not have much influence on the Czech startup scene – at least not directly. Founders often meet at universities or develop their ideas from their studies, and very few companies use the direct line from a university project to a functioning spin-off. Last year, out of 80 startups with investment, only three were described as university spin-offs.
6. Waiting years for investment
The average age of startups that received investment in 2024 was three years. However, the largest investments were directed to technology companies older than 10 years. On the contrary, one of the youngest startups was only weeks old at the time of receiving the investment, having founded the entity shortly before its announcement.
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The analysis by Rolu.cz is based on events on the Czech startup market, including startups of Czech founders whose headquarters are abroad. The information comes from official communication from startups and investors, but also from movements and data in the commercial register or in foreign registers. Data for the analysis was also provided by the Startup Kitchen platform.
