The Social Mobility Ventures team
93% of the UK population goes to a state school.
Yet state school alumni make up just 35% of FTSE 350 CEOs, 59% of founders and 20% of VCs. And, just 9% of the tech workforce come from low-income backgrounds.
According to new research from Social Mobility Ventures (SMV), state school founders are actually more likely to build sustainable, long-lasting startups — but only if they’re able to secure the pre-seed funding in the first place.
SMV’s analysis, based on Crunchbase records for more than 4,000 founders and 300 interviews, finds that 42% of Series C founders in the UK are state-educated, compared to just 13% from private schools (the remaining 45% were educated internationally).
State school founders are more likely to reach Series A and beyond too — 25%, versus 19% for privately educated peers. Once they’re in the venture pipeline, they become 30% more likely to progress to Series A and beyond.
But getting onto that path is a struggle.
40% of founders in stealth are state-educated, which is a decent percentage, but when you get to the pre-seed stage, they make up just 25%, proving there isn’t a talent issue, there’s an access issue.
Friends and family
David Houghton is the founder of SMV, a community championing state-schoolers in UK tech and entrepreneurship, and an investor at Antler.
Growing up just outside of Leeds, Houghton had never met anyone who worked in tech, “let alone a tech entrepreneur” and had never heard of venture capital until he was in his early twenties. In fact, his first foray into the world of startups and technology was the HBO show “Silicon Valley”.
His own entry into the tech scene came in 2018 when he moved to London and joined Seedrs, now Republic Europe, and quickly realised how differently resourced his peers were.
“I remember very vividly my first week on the job, 24 years old, I went to a pub with my colleagues and got asked what school I went to and I obviously went to my local comprehensive school because there wasn't really much else where I grew up,” he tells me. “And then one by one around the room it was like Eton, Harrow, Marlborough College, Charter House.”
I have at points said, ‘You are too early for us. You should come back once you've raised a friends and family round’. Which in retrospect is complete bullshit
That was one of the first times he realised he’d just joined a world that was a bit different to what he was initially expecting.
“Over time I suppose grew a chip on my shoulder that I was investing in founders who come from very different backgrounds to myself, working with investors who come from very different backgrounds from myself and making LPs much richer than they already were who come from very different backgrounds to myself.”
This frustration turned into action and he later joined Diversity VC, conducting research on underrepresented founders across a number of demographics, including education background.
He saw there was research that revealed how few investors are state school-educated, but noticed there was almost no equivalent research on founders. So he launched SMV to fill the gap and create, as he puts it, “the community we wish we had when we were just starting out in the VC and tech world”.
SMV now runs events, data projects and a friends and family syndicate for the founders without access to the bank of mum and dad. The intention is to help level the capital-access playing field, because working class founders are three times less likely to have access to friends and family capital.
“I have at points said, ‘You are too early for us. You should come back once you've raised a friends and family round’. Which in retrospect is complete bullshit,” he says.
Private school founders are 18% more likely to have access to venture capital to fund their early growth, but realistically, most people do not have access to hundreds of thousands of pounds from their friends and family to start a company.
“No one I grew up with has access to that kind of funding and most people that are in the working world don't have access to that kind of financial buffer to give them the right level of risk to just go and start a tech company, which is a very risky thing to do.”
A fair chance to start
But when state school founders manage to make it through the first few stages of venture, they thrive. Not only that, but they get a significant amount of funding. They accounted for only about 15% of the total founders surveyed, but 37% of total funding, compared to 11% for private school alumni.
“This data shows that world-class founders come from every part of society — what they need is a fair chance to start,” Niklas Zennström, Atomico CEO and SMV backer, said. “If the UK wants to stay globally competitive, ensuring equal access to entrepreneurship isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a growth strategy.”
Houghton argues that solving this is not just about rewriting VC behaviour, it's about widening tech participation at every level, and starting much earlier.
SMV is now working with partners including Google, Amazon and Microsoft on expanding early-stage access to tech careers, strengthening outreach and helping more people, who may never have been exposed to the startup world, get into their first jobs in tech.
Because once they’re in, SMV’s data suggests their odds improve dramatically. “It’s not a talent issue,” Houghton emphasises. “It’s an access issue.”
If the UK tech sector wants to keep growing — and keep producing globally competitive companies — the numbers show it is definitely worth improving access.