The register knows who founded every company and, month and year, how old they were. We pulled the director records behind the 29,609 UK marketing companies formed since January 2025 and asked two questions nobody had put to the data: does founder age predict survival, and does going solo? One answer is stark. The other is a near-null we publish anyway, because that is what a research desk does.
median founder age: 32 for companies that have already dissolved, 34 for survivors
estimated mortality gap between the youngest and most seasoned founders: under-25s ~9.5% vs 45-54s ~4.8%
of dead-company founders were under 25 at incorporation · they are only 15.5% of surviving-company founders
estimated mortality for solo-founder vs multi-founder companies · a near-null: the solo-founder death myth barely shows up
Source: Mode Marketing analysis of Companies House officer records, July 2026 · all 1,863 dissolved companies in the cohort plus a weighted random sample of 2,500 active ones · first-pass estimates, caveats disclosed in the method note below.
The youth gap is real and it is not small: the register suggests a company founded by someone under 25 is roughly twice as likely to be dead within the cohort window as one founded by someone in their late forties, with a clean gradient in between and a slight rise again past 55. Before anyone writes a think-piece: age here is a marker, not a cause. It travels with experience, capital, existing client networks and the option of going back to a job · the register can see none of those directly, only the outcome.
The near-null matters just as much. Solo-founder companies dissolved at an estimated 6.3% against 5.7% for founding teams · a difference small enough that we treat it as no meaningful effect. The startup folklore that a solo founder is a red flag simply does not appear in this data. We note our interest openly: Mode is a solo-founder company, and we committed in advance to publish this number whichever way it fell. It fell close to even.
For buyers, both findings point the same way as the rest of our register work: judge companies by what they do, not who they are. Filings on time, prices published, work verifiable · those behaviours separated survivors from casualties in every study in this series, from the survival rates to the restart-rate finding from this same sweep: roughly 1 in 10 dissolved marketing companies has a director already running another active company, which is why checking the person behind a company takes one free minute well spent.
Cohort: the 29,609 companies with marketing-services SIC codes incorporated at Companies House between 1 January 2025 and 12 July 2026. We pulled the officer records of all 1,863 dissolved companies and a random sample of 2,500 active ones (weighted up to the active population). Founders are directors appointed within 30 days of incorporation; ages derive from the register's month-and-year of birth at incorporation date. Honest limits, stated rather than buried: mortality-by-band figures are first-pass estimates not yet standardised by incorporation month (older cohort months have had longer to fail); the multi-founder group is the smaller sample; and dissolution is an administrative event that lags commercial reality. We will refine these with the September first-accounts wave. Data is public and reproducible; corrections welcome at hello@modemarketing.ai.
Early thirties. In Mode’s analysis of director records behind the 29,609 UK marketing companies incorporated since January 2025, the median founder age at incorporation was 32 among companies that have since dissolved and 34 among survivors. Source: Companies House officer records, analysed July 2026.
On this register, yes, markedly: companies founded by under-25s show an estimated ~9.5% dissolution rate against ~4.8% for founders aged 45 to 54, roughly double, with a clean gradient between and a slight uptick again at 55+. Honest label: these are first-pass estimates from a weighted sample, not yet standardised by incorporation month, and age is a marker of experience and capital, not a cause. We publish the caveat because the pattern deserves belief only with it attached.
Barely, if at all. Estimated mortality was 6.3% for solo-founder companies against 5.7% for companies with two or more founding directors: a near-null result. The folklore that going solo dramatically raises failure odds does not show up in this data. Mode is itself a solo-founder company; we would publish this either way, and this is what the register says.
Not much on its own, and that is the finding worth keeping: the strongest checks remain behavioural, not demographic. A company whose filings are on time, whose prices are published, and whose work is verifiable beats any founder profile. Where founder history genuinely matters is track record: the same analysis found roughly 1 in 10 dissolved marketing companies has a director already running another active company · check the person, not just the company.
Mode Marketing Limited: company 16231339, filings on time, every price published, research method on every page. Run the checks on us first · then on whoever else you're considering.
THE STATE OF THE UK AGENCY MARKETAll of Mode's research: the index.