Your likelihood of entrepreneurial success increases with age – It’s not too late to start your … [+]
For most people, the image of a successful entrepreneur is an unshackled, young, brilliant visionary, setting out to change the world, unafraid to work hard, and either a college dropout or a recent graduate from an elite university. They think of people like Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft when he was twenty years old, Steve Jobs, who was twenty-one when he co-founded Apple, or the twenty-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, or the twenty-five-year-old co-founders of Google, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin.
However, this image is flawed. If you’ve ever harbored the thought of quitting your job and starting your own venture, the good news is that your chances for entrepreneurial success get higher with each passing year. Time is your friend! And while a small set of exceptional individuals may have built great companies at a young age, the reality is that most successful entrepreneurs are older, often in their late thirties, forties, fifties, or even later in life. Most of them learned how to become entrepreneurs working at companies like yours and in similar roles as yours.
One of the most in-depth studies on the relationship between age and startup success was conducted by researchers from MIT, Northwestern, Wharton, and the US Census Bureau. They found that the mean age of startup founders across the US was 42 years. The mean age of high-tech startup founders (where one might presume that the founders are younger) was 43. And the average age of founders of the rare ultra-fast growth unicorns (the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing ventures) was 45.
The study shows that the likelihood of success as a founder increases with age until the age of 60. The older you get, the more likely your chances of success are. A 50-year-old founder is twice as likely to build a thriving enterprise that has either an IPO or a successful acquisition as a 30-year-old founder. And you don’t necessarily need practice as an entrepreneur to become one. Most successful founders have worked in corporate and other jobs before starting their venture.
The list of “older” founders is virtually endless. Eric Yuan created Zoom at 41, Bill Porter founded E-Trade at 54, Bernie Marcus founded Home Depot when he was 50, Bob Parsons founded Go Daddy at 47, Reed Hastings started Netflix when he was 37, Robert Noyce started Intel at 41, Leo Goodwin founded Geico at 50, Vera Wang designed her first dress at 40 and Workday was co-founded by Aneel Bhusri at 40 and David Duffield at 65.
You Can Become a Successful Founder (if You Meet These Three Criteria)
Age is not a barrier if you are considering leaving your job to become an entrepreneur. But you need to be ready to become a founder, and your odds of success are the greatest if you meet the following criteria that most founders share:
1. You Know Your Domain:
The most successful entrepreneurs, the top 0.1% whose ventures have created large enterprises that have experienced extreme success, have held jobs in their industry before starting their own companies. Domain knowledge and industry experience are crucial for any aspiring entrepreneur because you can only create a valuable enterprise by innovating, and for that, you must deeply understand your industry. Every successful founder knows their product and business model inside out.
To arrive at new ideas in any field requires a core of knowledge; only a baseline of current knowledge can lead to new knowledge. Most advances in science, technology, art, medicine, and every other discipline are driven by people who strongly understand their domain. If you don’t understand your domain, you are not likely to advance it or build the next generation of value.
2. You Have Been Successful at Your Job:
Success at your job is highly correlated with your effectiveness as a founder because people who have already experienced professional success have a higher bar in how they define entrepreneurial success. This observation flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which dictates that startup founders need to be scrappy and hungry and that people set in their ways at corporate jobs will be unable to create new value. The people holding “cushy” corporate jobs are the ones most likely to become successful founders.
Eric Yuan resigned from his lucrative head of engineering role at WebEx to start Zoom. He did so because he saw the limitations in WebEx’s offering, and the only way he could build a better product was to leave his job and create his new venture, Zoom. I discuss why high-performers leave their company to start their own ventures here.
3. You are Intrinsically Motivated:
The most successful creators are motivated by a more significant cause than simply making money or gaining external rewards. They are genuinely interested in solving a problem; when they solve it, they get a very high financial outcome. Intrinsic motivation is essential because if you are extrinsically motivated or start a company primarily for the rewards it may bring, your efforts are less likely to result in the outcomes you want.
Money is an extrinsic motivator; when you are doing something solely for money, you tend to become more risk averse, which inhibits you from having the creativity and freedom you need to build a successful venture. Intrinsic motivation leads to self-belief and persistence, two traits necessary to build a successful startup.
It’s Not Too Late:
Many people wish to quit their jobs and create the next great company. Fortunately for you, it is not too late. Your stage of life does not dictate entrepreneurial success; your state of mind does. If starting a new venture is something you are considering, all the data points to you becoming successful. Just be sure you do this for the right reasons.
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