It’s a Young Person’s Game
The startup world loves to share stories of young prodigies like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs as the epitomes of success, reinforcing the narrative that founding a successful company is a young person’s game. These iconic figures who founded their transformative in their early twenties have become the face of what a successful entrepreneur should look like.
But the Truth Is…
Contrary to popular belief, a great deal of peer-reviewed research suggests that the popular narrative is incorrect – that the average age of founders of top-performing startups is 45. To put this into further context, research looking at millions of founded startups in the 2000s shows that a 50-year-old founder is statistically 1.8 times more likely to achieve a successful exit or IPO than a 30-year-old founder, invalidating the stereotype of the young tech entrepreneur.
How Is This Possible?
These somewhat surprising statistics can be attributed to several factors that come with age. Older entrepreneurs tend to bring more experience to the table, having spent more years in the workforce. This experience is invaluable, providing insights into business operations, management skills, and industry-specific knowledge that are crucial for navigating the complexities of a startup. Additionally, older entrepreneurs tend to build broader and more diverse professional networks that can be leveraged for partnerships, securing funding, and customer acquisition.
The greater financial stability that tends to come with age allows older founders to invest more in their ventures and weather financial downturns without immediate external funding. While having spent significantly more time in their respective fields, older founders often possess deeper domain or industry knowledge, enabling them to identify market needs and gaps more accurately, which can lead to the development of more viable and targeted business solutions. Lastly, the credibility and trustworthiness perceived due to their experience and track record can make older founders more appealing to investors, partners, and customers.
When Do Our Superpowers Peak?
Cognitive abilities do not peak at a single point in time but vary across different abilities and ages. Research indicates that while certain cognitive functions like information-processing speed and short-term memory peak in the early adult years, other aspects such as emotional understanding and crystallized intelligence, which is rooted in experience and accumulated knowledge, peak much later, in the 40s, 50s, and even 60s.
TL;DR
- Entrepreneurial success is not confined to a specific age bracket. The myth that startup founders predominantly belong to the younger demographic has been debunked by the data.
- The combination of experience, network, financial stability, industry knowledge, and credibility contributes to their success, increasing the likelihood of significant achievements in the entrepreneurial journey well beyond the traditional “prime” age.
- Although information processing speed and short-term memory peak before the age of 35, emotional intelligence and crystallized intelligence (knowledge rooted in experience) peak after 50.
- The probability of big success increases with age, until around the age of 60.
Sources
- Hartshorne, J. K., & Germine, L. T. (2015). When does cognitive functioning peak? the asynchronous rise and fall of different cognitive abilities across the life span. Psychological Science, 26(4), 433–443. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797614567339
- Source: Azoulay, P., Jones, B., Kim, J. D., & Miranda, J. (2018). Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship. https://doi.org/10.3386/w24489
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