Legal Ninja Snapshots
4 minute read | June.17.2025
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We are excited to share the initial findings from our comprehensive Founder Equity Study 2025.
Our research analyzed founder teams and equity distributions across almost 2,200 German start-ups established between 2019 and 2024, each having secured external funding through angel investors or (corporate) venture capital. While our dataset focuses on funded start-ups rather than the entire German start-up ecosystem, it provides valuable insights into team composition, gender distribution, and equity allocation patterns. The analysis tracks developments over multiple years and offers both aggregate and sector-specific perspectives.
The complete findings will be published in the fifteenth edition of the Orrick Legal Ninja Series (OLNS#15). This comprehensive report will include:
In this two-part mini-series, we present key findings on:
Let us first look at the distribution of team sizes across the entire data set and how it developed over the years.
The overall data set shows that two-founder teams dominate (41%) followed by three-founder teams (26%) and solo founders (19%). Spoiler alert (more on that in OLNS#15): several sectors display notable deviations from these aggregate patterns.
The aggregate data shows remarkable stability in team composition over the six-year period. The average team size has remained consistently between 2.33 and 2.58 founders, with two-founder teams maintaining their dominant position (ranging from 37% to 45% of all start-ups) throughout the period.
However, some notable variations emerge:
We also analyzed the total gender distribution as well as the temporal distribution patterns from 2019-2024, looking at both the overall dataset and sector-specific trends (again, for the sector-specific deep dive we refer you to OLNS#15). A statistical note is in order: The analysis of recent years (2023-2024) and certain sectors should be interpreted with caution due to smaller sample sizes. Additionally, our dataset's focus on VC-backed companies might not fully represent the broader start-up ecosystem's gender dynamics.
Our data set included a total of 5,299 founders and our preliminary analysis confirms and quantifies the significant underrepresentation of women in German start-ups. We found an overall woman representation of only 15%.
This disparity not only persists but often widens with increasing team sizes. While some sectors show more promising numbers, the overall picture suggests that substantial work remains to achieve better gender balance across all sectors and team sizes. However, as we will see in the analysis of the annual developments there are a few encouraging signs.
Our data shows a gradual, though modest, improvement in woman representation over the analyzed period. While man founders remained dominant throughout, the proportion of woman founders increased from 12% in 2019 to 18% in 2024 across all team sizes.
While there is a general trend toward increased woman representation, the development varies significantly across different team configurations and years.