Founders and CEOs of funded startups have a median of 4,853 LinkedIn followers, their typical post gets 39 reactions, comments and reposts, and 82% of them post less than once a week, according to a Megaphone study of 180,011 LinkedIn posts by 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups.
We built this study because founders keep asking us the same question in different words: is my LinkedIn normal? Is 3,000 followers good for a seed-stage founder? Is 20 likes a post bad? Until now nobody could answer that, because the benchmarks that exist mix founders with coaches, recruiters and creators who post for a living. This one only counts people running funded companies.
Want to see where you stand? Check your profile against these benchmarks in about a minute.
Key findings
- The median founder has 4,853 followers. The top 10% start at 17,594.
- The median founder's typical post gets 39 engagements, about 0.73% of their followers.
- 82% of founders post less than once a week. The median founder posts about once every three weeks. Only 3.5% post three or more times a week.
- Founders who post 3+ times a week get 24x the weekly engagement of founders who post less than monthly (116 vs 4.9), and have 4.6x the followers (13,922 vs 3,055).
- At startups under 50 people, the founder out-follows the company page 80% of the time.
- Founders of bigger companies have bigger audiences, from a median of 2,958 followers at 1 to 10 people to 7,697 at 1,000+.
The benchmarks
Every founder in the study
| Bottom 10% | Bottom 25% | Median | Top 25% | Top 10% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Followers | 1,399 | 2,465 | 4,853 | 9,210 | 17,594 |
| Engagement on a typical post | 10 | 20 | 39 | 73 | 128 |
| Comments on a typical post | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4 | 7 |
| Engagement per 1,000 followers | 1.8 | 3.7 | 7.3 | 13.4 | 22.0 |
| Posts per week | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.8 | 1.7 |
"Engagement on a typical post" is each founder's median post: reactions plus comments plus reposts. We use the median so one big announcement doesn't make an account look busier than it is.
By company size
| Employees | Founders | Median followers | Engagement on a typical post | Posts per week | Post weekly or more |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | 1,076 | 2,958 | 23 | 0.28 | 16% |
| 11 to 50 | 1,182 | 5,061 | 33 | 0.39 | 21% |
| 51 to 200 | 1,119 | 5,424 | 47 | 0.33 | 19% |
| 201 to 1,000 | 676 | 6,665 | 67 | 0.31 | 17% |
| 1,000+ | 305 | 7,697 | 90 | 0.33 | 17% |
Founders at 11 to 50 person companies post the most: 21% post weekly or more.
By sector
| Industry | Founders | Median followers | Engagement on a typical post | Posts per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software development | 1,441 | 5,872 | 42 | 0.39 |
| Technology, information and internet | 596 | 5,339 | 40 | 0.35 |
| Financial services | 264 | 5,765 | 45 | 0.36 |
| Computer and network security | 169 | 4,765 | 38 | 0.39 |
| Biotechnology research | 152 | 4,026 | 50 | 0.19 |
| Hospitals and health care | 114 | 4,554 | 39 | 0.19 |
| IT services and consulting | 105 | 3,891 | 21 | 0.33 |
| Business consulting and services | 83 | 2,948 | 14 | 0.44 |
Biotech founders post half as often as software founders, but their typical post gets more engagement (50 vs 42).
By region, US founders have a median of 5,199 followers, European founders 4,328, and founders everywhere else 3,966.
The founder is the company's biggest audience
| Company size | Founder has more followers than the company page | Median founder | Median company page |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 10 | 93% | 2,958 | 538 |
| 11 to 50 | 67% | 5,061 | 3,383 |
| 51 to 200 | 23% | 5,424 | 11,969 |
| 201 to 1,000 | 6% | 6,671 | 43,944 |
| 1,000+ | 2% | 7,697 | 176,191 |
At startups under 50 people, the founder out-follows the company page 80% of the time. At 1 to 10 people the founder's profile is 5.8 times the size of the company's. For most early-stage companies, the founder's profile is the biggest audience the company has.
Posting rhythm goes with it: 74% of founders who post three or more times a week have more followers than their company, against 41% of founders who post less than monthly.
How often founders post, and what consistency is worth
| Posting rhythm | Share of founders | Median followers | Engagement on a typical post | Engagement per week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Less than monthly | 43% | 3,055 | 37 | 4.9 |
| 1 to 4 a month | 38% | 5,867 | 43 | 21.9 |
| 1 to 3 a week | 15% | 9,895 | 37 | 60.5 |
| 3+ a week | 3.5% | 13,922 | 29 | 116.4 |
A founder posting three or more times a week gets a little less on each post (29 engagements vs 37 at the median), but posts so much more often that their weekly total is 24 times higher. They also have 4.6 times the followers, and that gap holds inside every company size: among founders of 11 to 50 person companies, those posting three or more times a week have a median of 11,318 followers against 2,869 for those posting less than monthly.
Posting the very next day costs a post about 10%, and posting four or more times in one week costs each post about 8%. Both are small next to the gain in weekly totals.
What the top quarter does differently
The benchmarks tell you where you stand. The same dataset shows what moves a founder up. We'll publish each of these in full over the coming weeks:
- Stories beat announcements written like press releases. A founder telling their own story gets 1.57 times their usual engagement. Sounding like the company gets 0.92 times.
- Photos beat carousels. A post with one photo gets 1.38 times a founder's usual engagement, several photos 1.69 times, and a PDF carousel 0.84 times.
- Tagging people helps. Tagging four or more people lifts a post 1.25 times, with everything else held constant.
- Links and hashtags don't matter. Neither changes engagement once you compare like with like.
See where you stand
Paste your LinkedIn URL into the founder LinkedIn benchmark and you'll get your percentile for followers, typical post engagement, posting rhythm and engagement per 1,000 followers, against founders at your company size. It reads your profile and last 30 posts live, measures them the same way this study did, and gives you the three changes worth making first.
How we did this
We started from the portfolios of venture firms and accelerators and identified 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups with active LinkedIn profiles, after removing anyone whose title showed they weren't a founder or chief executive. For each, we collected up to their last 50 posts (180,011 posts in total), their follower count, and their company's size and LinkedIn page on October 6, 2026.
- Engagement is reactions plus comments plus reposts. LinkedIn doesn't publish impressions for other people's posts, so this study doesn't measure reach.
- Engagement benchmarks use English-language posts at least 14 days old, from the 3,932 founders with at least 10 such posts (160,540 posts).
- "Typical post" means the founder's median post.
- Follower counts are a snapshot from October 6, 2026. We'll recount every month and publish the changes here.
- The sample is founders of funded startups found through investor portfolios. It doesn't represent every founder or every business owner.
To cite this study: "according to a Megaphone study of 180,011 LinkedIn posts by 4,485 founders and CEOs of funded startups."