Klarna and Improbable are producing more successful startup founders than any other company in Europe, according to a new report from VC firm Antler. The research tracked alumni founders across the continent and identified the companies acting as true talent pipelines — what Antler calls "real founder factories."

The European Leaders

Most of the top-ranked founder factories globally are American, including Riot Games and LiveRamp. But two European companies break through the list. Measured by how many alumni-founded companies reached Series A:

  • Klarna leads in Europe with 14 alumni-founded companies reaching Series A
  • Improbable, the UK deeptech firm, follows with 8

This aligns with a separate analysis by Accel, which found Klarna, Spotify, and Deliveroo generate more second-generation startups than any other unicorns in the region.

The Bigger Finding: Where You Work Matters More Than You Think

Antler's headline stat goes beyond brand names. The firm analyzed 51,722 startups in the UK, Germany, France, and Sweden that raised a seed round between 2010 and 2021.

The standout finding: founders who worked at a startup as it scaled from seed through Series C are nearly twice as likely to build a company that reaches Series A themselves.

  • Average Series A conversion rate for European startups: ~23%
  • For founders with seed-to-Series C scaling experience: 45.6%

"No other previous employment or experience comes close," the report states.

Critically, the report finds that joining a unicorn in its late stages — just before an IPO — is less valuable than navigating a company through a difficult Series A round. The hands-on experience of operating under resource constraints, rapid iteration, and existential pressure appears to be the actual training mechanism.

What Investors Are Getting Wrong

Christoph Klink, a partner at Antler, argues that the VC community has been over-indexing on prestigious company names when evaluating founders.

"They should actually be paying more attention to the time a founder spent at a Series B logistics startup that's far less mainstream. We had this feeling for a long time and we're a little surprised to see it confirmed so heavily in the data."

The implication is that investors using brand recognition as a proxy for founder quality are likely missing a significant share of high-potential talent.

What This Means for Founders and Operators

For startup founders and early employees, the data makes a clear case for prioritizing early-stage, high-growth environments over late-stage prestige. Riding a company from seed to Series C — with all the chaos that entails — appears to be one of the most reliable ways to build the skills that translate into founding success.

For investors, Klink's call to action is direct:

"The task for Europe's investors is to update their filters to find these founders and back them early."

That means developing sourcing strategies that go beyond tracking ex-Google or ex-Meta talent, and building conviction around operators who've done the unglamorous work of scaling a lesser-known startup through multiple funding rounds. The data now backs that instinct.