Consider the pedigrees in Figure 2. In both cases the parents constitutes the set of founders, whereas the siblings are the nonfounders.
"That was one reason – but in the main it felt right at this point in time to acknowledge the explosion of growth in Berlin amongst startups like Soundcloud, ResearchGate and Wooga, many of which are being created up by an international set of founders.
Marc Andreessen, whose venture firm invests fifteen per cent of its funds in YC companies, said, "The composite view here is that YC is getting better at picking as they grow — and that, because they have an increasingly powerful magnet, they're getting a more routinely qualified set of founders".
500 Startups has always prided itself on backing a diverse set of founders and startups.
This group of 41 companies comes from 10 countries representing over ten countries, with a notably diverse set of founders.
But if we could get a broader set of founders, we could add more possible break outs, and I think that's a really good mission".
All of them share a couple common traits: they launched before taking outside investment, and they were able to do it because they had a set of founders with the skills to build the initial version of the product themselves.
In a statement, managing director Shailendra Singh of Sequoia Capital said "In our view, Appier has a world class technology platform and team, and has a special set of founders led by Chih-Han Yu.
Another set of founders of a medical device company knew they needed to get their IP house in order, but — as is often the case with startups — other pressing needs took priority.
An additional $500,000 came through AngelList and SecondMarket via a strategic set of founders, senior executives and alumni from companies, including Dell, eBay, Facebook, Hewlett-Packard, IAC, McKinsey, Nuance, Oracle, PayPal and SAP.
