Photo by Ben Rosett on Unsplash

Okay, so the headline may sound a little scary. But being a serial-something doesn’t always yield negative consequences. In entrepreneurship, it’s actually a revered quality.

A report titled “The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur,” which inspired this neat infographic, highlights some very interesting things. For example, entrepreneurship doesn’t run in the family as often as we’ve been taught to think. Or, if you’re 30 and still haven’t made the cut, don’t worry – most magnates started raking in their fortunes much later.

Education matters more than having rich parents

According to the report, the average age of company founders when they started their current companies was 40. It clearly matters to be educated, because more than 95% of respondents earned bachelor’s degrees, while 47% had even more advanced studies under their belt. Less than 1% reported coming from extremely rich, or extremely poor environments.

15% of the surveyed entrepreneurs reported having a brother or a sister that previously started a business. This may seem obscure, but it suggests they had someone to look up to and learn from, perhaps even to form a team. As many as 70% were married at the time the launched their first business, which bodes well with the above age numbers, while 5% were divorced, separated, or widowed.

Entrepreneurship isn’t necessarily a genetic attribute passed down from generation to generation, with the majority of respondents saying they were the first in their families to launch a business.

From office worker to ‘serial’ entrepreneur

The average number of businesses launched by the respondents in the survey was 2.3, in what can be called ‘serial’ entrepreneurship. It may not necessarily run in the family, but apparently it does coarse through one’s veins once it’s set sail. Asked if wealth was the key motivator to start a business, three quarters said “yes.” Only 4.5% cited the inability to find traditional employment as a reason for starting their business.

Perhaps one of the most interesting response of all was this one: 75.4% said they’d worked as employees at other companies for more than six years before launching their own ventures.

Granted, it does take a little more than these factors coming together to make you into a businessperson (acumen is probably first on the list of additional requirements). But at the same time, it’s encouraging to know that most entrepreneurs used to have day jobs like you and me before making it big.