The Scaleup Report
Scaling New Heights: A Data-Driven Approach to Understanding Startup Success
In the world of startups, where aspiration meets innovation, a particular species stands out — those that successfully evolve from fledgling startup to scaleup. While many set out on this journey, only a few successfully navigate the challenging pathway to scale to a valuation of $50 million or more.
The quintessential billion-dollar question has always been what characteristics, behaviors, and decisions of early-stage startups significantly increase your chance of success at scaling. What’s your opinion? Can you prove that with data?
Startup Genome's groundbreaking Scaleup Report, a culmination of 11 years of primary research with close to 100,000 startup founders globally, provides unparalleled data-driven answers to this critical question.
As research pioneers and government policy advisors, we have charted the first-ever longitudinal study that zeros in on the unique characteristics that differentiate early-stage startups that succeed in scaling from those that falter. From 2015 to 2019, 30,000 startup founders (thank you!) answered our long surveys and 20,000 of them entrusted us with confidential information such as their revenue. But crucially, 7,000 of those startups (under four years old) also gave us their domain name, allowing us in 2023 to identify several hundreds that scaled to a valuation of more than $50 million (and 18 unicorns!) within four to eight years later.
Startup Genome's commitment to understanding and bolstering the startup ecosystem continues with this seminal research. Such a comprehensive study offers rare and invaluable insights. It reveals startup and ecosystem success factors and provides a roadmap to entrepreneurs, investors, and ecosystem builders alike. It will further enrich Startup Genome’s work with national and city ministries and agencies to define and execute comprehensive policies and action plans that strengthen their startup ecosystem into a sustainable engine of job creation and economic growth — our mission.
Furthermore, for stakeholders, from startups to policymakers and investors, understanding the original ingredients of a successful scaleup can guide resource allocation, policymaking, and strategic collaborations. Clarifying these startup and ecosystem success factors means empowering all startup communities with knowledge that significantly increases the success rate of startups. In a landscape where the margin between success and failure is razor thin, such knowledge leads to informed decisions, driving growth and bigger success.
To entrepreneurs, this report is a compass — one that we, the global startup community, built together. As always, we give it back to you. As you dive into this report, I hope you put its insights into action so they fuel your entrepreneurial journey — like every piece of Startup Genome research has for me.
To scaling new heights!