How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/younger-vs-older-tech-entrpreneurs

by jensv • 8 years ago

137 58 8 years ago

insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu

Link to the paper: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/A...

The abstract: Many observers, and many investors, believe that young people are especially likely to produce the most successful new firms. We use administrative data at the U.S. Census Bureau to study the ages of founders of growth-oriented start-ups in the past decade. Our primary finding is that successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young. The mean founder age for the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing new ventures is 45.0. The findings are broadly similar when considering high-technology sectors, entrepreneurial hubs, and successful firm exits. Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success. These findings strongly reject common hypotheses that emphasize youth as a key trait of successful entrepreneurs.

jasode• 8 years ago

The mean founder age for [...] is 45.0. [...] Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success.

To me, "prior experience" favors B2B startups and those tend to be founded by 40-something entrepreneurs. (I made a previous comment about this.[1])

In contrast for B2C, many observers (VCs like Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson, etc) have noticed that experience doesn't necessarily help consumer-facing internet companies and viral smartphone apps. (E.g. Twitter founder Ev Williams started Medium at age 40 but it's still losing money and it's not as successful as Twitter.)

The counterintuitive conclusions about median age of 45 may be happening because the study doesn't group the data between B2B vs B2C. It's the B2C startups that have more exposure in mainstream media and they dominate pop culture conversation. The numerous B2B startups become hidden as a sort of "dark matter" in the business universe because they probably comprise most of the successes but ironically get the least amount of news coverage.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16902662

madaxe_again2• 8 years ago

You spend half your career being told that you are too young by prospective clients and investors (I was rather astounded when we were turned down on this ground at first, rather than anything to do with the product or service, but eventually grew to accept it), and then the next half being told you are too old by the same.

Ah, to be forever 34 and eight months.

avighnay• 8 years ago

This might not be the case going forward for cloud, SaaS models with zero touch sales. Most software would move to this category sooner than we think as there is high vendor motive. It is hindered only by regulatory or compliance needs in certain industries/countries

taurath• 8 years ago

Those regulatory needs are more often than not the secret sauce and speciality of those vendors. Look at the payments space - now that every municipality is going to tax online sales it pushes more and more companies to outsource the cost of compliance to a vendor.

onion2k• 8 years ago

Whatever reason an investor gives for turning your investment down, it's actually code for "I don't think you can pull this off."

tonyedgecombe2• 8 years ago

Or "you look like the guy that ran off with my wife".

Like interview feedback, it's generally useless advice because people make emotional decisions rather than rational.

pembrook• 8 years ago

While I tend to agree (My experience has been that the desire to make money is stronger than the desire to be ageist)...it's still an area that is highly subjective.

I would think bias is more likely to get eliminated the further up the funding ladder you go (i.e. sure this person might not look like me, but the numbers prove he knows what he/she knows what their doing).

However at the angel stage, there's so much room for subjectivity that I can't believe bias doesn't play a role.

addicted• 8 years ago

I suspect a lot of older entrepreneurs are turned down for their age as well, but due to legal restrictions, this isn't stated outright the way it may be for a younger person.

madaxe_again2• 8 years ago

In our case it was definitely age - the number of times I’d take an older employee along to a meeting and wryly smile as they’d assume he was me was substantial. Then I grew a beard and lost a load of weight, and things changed.

I hate to say it, but it’s rarely what you do or what you say - it’s how you do it and how you look when you say it.

These days I look like a mature, sensible businessperson, but I’m still the same twelve year old jackass I always was.

ganeshkrishnan8• 8 years ago

This is what I absolutely hate about VCs. The reasons are garbage and they are actually harming by trying to be polite. There is no such thing as too young or old for startups. Why do they even care if they think your startup is going to make it?

I got turned down by one VC because "they don't invest in India". My startup is registered in Delaware, I pitched him in US and I am not even Indian citizen

sumedh2• 8 years ago

but was your target market Indians?

corobo2• 8 years ago

What was/is the startup? Reading between the snark lines it sounds like the VC thought you'd struggle to achieve your goals without resorting to cheap outsourcing

1ba9115454• 8 years ago

The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once.

If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

dragonwriter• 8 years ago

The article talks of old and young people as if they were different people.

They are different people.

All of the old people were young people once.

All ex-Communists were once Communists, yet Communists and ex-Communists are still different people.

jiveturkey• 8 years ago

yes.

every 10-15 yrs or so, you are a different person entirely.

search for dan gilbert. here’s his ted talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_you_are_always_changin...

indogooner• 8 years ago

Right. It would be more instructive to see what percentage of old entrepreneurs are first-timers.

ganeshkrishnan8• 8 years ago

Also subjective to define successful. I started at 16 but by no means million dollar business. Just barely enough to feed myself. Then moved on to consulting and finally now a startup

TomMarius• 8 years ago

It'd be even better to know their work experience.

jmartrican2• 8 years ago

In the article Zuck is quoted as saying "Young people are just smarter" or something to that affect. If that's the view of the Valley as a whole, as the article alludes to, does the Valley think that people get dumber as they get older or that young people are just coming out of HS/college smarter?

collyw• 8 years ago

Old people are wiser.

zxcmx• 8 years ago

I think if he had been older when he made that comment it would have been more interesting.

Personally I just read it as “young person pretty sure that young people are smarter”.

technofiend• 8 years ago

So has he set the date for his retirement, yet? I mean the board should have his ouster lined up by the time he hits 30, right? Oh crap! He's already 34. Nice knowing you Mark but it's time to move over, old man.

detaro2• 8 years ago

If you look at the linked source article, it seems like it's mostly "hire young people, they'll be more willing to go all-in on work" (vs people with distractions like kids or ideas about work-life balance)

jath• 8 years ago

I presume one reason could be at 40 you dont make the mistakes you made at 20. I was 20 once and when i built a product i tried to load it with features/options. Now at 30 i make things as simple as possible. I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL. I don’t discuss scaling issues. I dont bother about 80% of the issues i used to discuss when i was 20. I’m better of now.

ganeshkrishnan8• 8 years ago

You are right. The average entrepreneur could be 16 but the average successful will be around 40. I did the same mistake as you, adding as many features as possible so that users can use whatever they like. Now I think of it like adding as many wheels as possible to a car so that users can use whatever wheels they like.

Keep things as simple and single functionality as possible. If you can't explain your startup in one sentence, it's doing too much

JeanMarcS• 8 years ago

Unfortunately, even some in their forties haven’t learned it yet.

I had a client around 2008-2009 (he was around 40 at the time and successfully launched several companies) who wanted a website/web app which basically was doing crowdfunding and videoconferencing (plus shared board and documents)

Yeah, I said basically and here we are getting a lot of functionality. I spare you the rest.

Needless to say after 2 years and a half of discussion and meetings and « what about we add that functionality ? », money ran dry and the whole thing never launched.

WalterBright• 8 years ago

Yeah, one thing experience teaches you is what matters and what doesn't. I still struggle with that, though.

TekMol• 8 years ago

    I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL.

That is a language though, not a DB.

kiloreux• 8 years ago

Did you really have to be that guy ? What he meant basically is using a relational database. Please refer to the HN guidelines before commenting. It strongly encourages to have comments that add value to the discussion.

SmellyGeekBoy• 8 years ago

In the .NET / Microsoft world "SQL" has been synonymous with "Microsoft SQL Server" for years. GP could just be from that background.

jmartrican2• 8 years ago

I assumed he meant MySQL, but now that you bring it up I wonder what other people thought he meant?

katzgrau• 8 years ago

Agreed. You realize that making money is the hard part so there's no need to do a ton of thinking into technical decisions until it becomes "a good problem" to have.

These days I might have an idea for a feature in my head and pitch it to people as if it exists to gauge interest. If it seems like it's a clear winner I build it into my product. If not, I'm not writing any code.

bitL• 8 years ago

Could this be a result of wide-spread ageism? People >40 are basically forced to be entrepreneurial and can't afford to waste time on unimportant stuff like they did in their 20s.

mianos• 8 years ago

Similarly they could be forced to be entrepreneurial because they can't get a job at Amazon/Google/Facebook etc.

ddebernardy• 8 years ago

Maybe, but don't discount experience too. As one on the wrong side of 40, I'd humbly put forward that many things I simply "knew" or had to try as a youngster were just ... crazy. :D

codingdave• 8 years ago

As someone in their 40s, that perspective is completely alien to me. As my kids are getting older and no longer need 24x7 supervision, I am getting more free time in my 40s to "waste on unimportant stuff". I'm doing more side projects, more art, more reading, and still getting my job done and sharing time with my family. Combine that time with more experience and a larger nest egg to support time away from salaried work... and any entrepreneurial efforts are not because I am forced into them, but because all the pieces of my life are aligned well to try something new.

fapjacks• 8 years ago

This is exactly my experience, as well. I started companies twice in my life before out of necessity, literally to pay the rent. Now, I'm doing it because I want to do it and I have the resources available.

harrydry• 8 years ago

How are people believing this shit. Complete BS.

There's several independent variables (money / trial and error / twitter following / coding ability etc ...)

this clickbait paper makes it sound like age is the independent variable. when age is merely CORRELATED with these independent variables. Age itself is of little importance.

You may as well say:

"A person who has already started 5 startups is 4.9X more likely to found a successful startup than a person has never founded a startup before"

Google "Multicollinearity" before you vend BS clickbait.

amelius• 8 years ago

Can we make a distinction based on:

- High-tech/low-tech. It makes a difference if the entrepreneur simply glued together existing technologies, or invented a new technology.

- The amount of investment money.

- The amount of failed companies of the entrepreneur.

denzil_correa• 8 years ago

Previous Discussion : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16794228

vonmoltke• 8 years ago

What is the threshold these days for flagging something a dupe? I clicked that expecting to see a post from, say, 5 days ago; I found one from 78 days ago.

slededit• 8 years ago

There seems to be a middle ground where someone posts a link to the older thread, and people upvote the current one depending on how interesting it is. Dupes aren't against site policy unless they are spam; however they do seem to offend a small minority.

detaro2• 8 years ago

It's still one year.

andrewn32• 8 years ago

Industry expertise and decades understanding how others solve problems in your field, larger network, etc. make a successful outcome much more likely.

DataDisciple• 8 years ago

After parsing the comments, I have not seen one person mention management or leadership. Someone with 20 years experience hiring and leading teams is going to be much better than someone doing it for the first time in their life. The ability to know your weaknesses, surround yourself with good people who fit your vision/culture and address those weaknesses, is not something most 25 year olds can do. Most at 25 have no idea what their weaknesses are. which makes it all the more impressive when people like Zuck, Spiegel can scale into massive companies.

But I also understand why you would want to invest in a 20-something. On average, they are going to be more aware of emerging tech, and guided with the right advisors can get a company off the ground and then supported with the necessary pieces.

How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

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