This paper presents an empirical investigation of personal characteristics of founders of high tech start-ups. Among the individual level characteristics that we investigate there are: Personal Traits, Psychological Attributes, Skills and Prior Knowledge, Entrepreneurial Orientation, Founders’ perception of the support and obstacles coming from external environment. We compare a sample of 104 academic entrepreneurs to a control sample of 63 non-academic start-up founders to detect any similarities/differences. The results show that the academic entrepreneurs differ in terms of entrepreneurial orientation, personal traits, prior knowledge and in the perception of the external support, while they are similar in terms of psychological attributes, skills and in the perception of environmental obstacles. Policy implications are discussed.