Since early 2023, we've been tracking every French greentech startup that announced a round from pre-seed to Series A. All that was left was to let the numbers speak.

What do they tell us? The verdict is more nuanced than one might have initially thought. Compared to their counterparts in the "traditional" startup world, greentech founders are more likely to have an engineering background (64%); PhD holders are also overrepresented (10%).

Small surprise: Greentech isn't actually more gender-balanced (or barely) than tech overall—just under a quarter (24%) of founders are women.

Here are the key structural findings from the study:

22% of startups have mixed-gender teams with at least one female founder (48% in our portfolio). 64% of teams hold an engineering degree or scientific research qualification at master's level or above (51% in our portfolio). Air Liquide is the top source of founders with 11 profiles over the period, followed by EY and McKinsey (10). Bpifrance is the most active investor by number of deals (11) and capital deployed, followed by Asterion Ventures (8 deals and €14M invested) over the period covered.

A few words on the study's methodology:

Inspired by studies dedicated to unicorn founder profiles or those who successfully raise a Series A in France, we examined the backgrounds and trajectories of 426 co-founders across 202 French greentechs that raised a pre-seed, seed or Series A between January 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024.

Important clarification: we only studied startups that raised funding during this period. Unlike Impact France's 40/120 Index or BPI's annual greentech report, our sample is more limited (it corresponds to the "Impact at Scale" company profile that Asterion is designed to support).

To select the companies, we used Bpifrance's definition: a greentech is a company offering an innovative solution (a product, service, or process) that improves the environmental impact of businesses or end consumers, by contributing significantly to at least one objective of the European taxonomy: climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation, sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources, transition to a circular economy, pollution prevention and reduction, protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems.

To build our sample, we relied on the Avolta and CTVC newsletters, which track nearly all funding rounds, as well as LinkedIn (and our own network when needed) to map out founders' educational and professional backgrounds prior to launching their startups.

This study is a first that we would like to repeat each year, diving deeper into specific career paths in particular.

Find Camille Wong's article in Les Echos and the full study via this link.