I'm not a founder, but I don't believe it's (ever) too late, as long as you have the passion and drive to get it done.
My suggestion would be to stop thinking about "startup founders" as 20-something college-dropouts that we so easily envision, and instead remember that most of the world's successful companies (not startups) are run by older, more experienced CEOs. You might not pull as many ridiculous redbull-fueled all-nighters (or maybe you will), but you've also seen a lot more in the world -- especially in business.
You ask if you're "too old to compete with the 20s" -- I have little doubt that they wonder if they're too young to compete with more experienced businesspeople.
Lots of great examples of entrepreneurs who founded successful companies after turning 35, and includes answers from Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Reed Hastings (Netflix), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia, Wikia), and more.
Over at 500 Startups we see a substantial number of founders and founding members who are in their 30s and 40s, and even some in their 50s and beyond. This topic resurfaces every so often. Google will produce various articles and studies on the topic. Here's a study from HBR using Crunchbase API, LinkedIn, WSJ- https://hbr.org/2014/04/how-old-are-silicon-valleys-top-foun...
Don't quit your job. There's no reason to unless your real motivation is to feel like you're being an entrepreneur. In which case, I urge you to reconsider.
Create a project and work on it in your spare time. Get people using it early, and learn as much from them as possible. When an aspect of your project takes more time than you have spare, find someone to help with that task. Ideally, charge money; and once you have 10-20 customers, double your price and get 10-20 more. Keep doubling your price until a healthy amount of customers start citing price as the deciding factor—you've found a value for your product that serves both you and your customers.
At some point, you'll be making enough to live and save at least $1,000/mo—that's when you quit and focus on your project full-time; if you want to go the funding route, you have that freedom still.
> In fact, research shows that the median age of U.S.-born tech company founders
> is 39, and there are twice as many entrepreneurs older than 50 than there are
> younger that age 25.
SHIT NO!!! I'm 35, live in NYC, and one year into my first real startup that I co-founded. A few insights from my experience, as well as some challenges and advantages: 1) Everyone is younger than me and it's mostly humorous and enjoyable (I play much younger than typical 35yo's, tho). 2) I spent 10 years running a partnership marketing agency and I was lucky that I could easily translate my skills/experience/contacts to the startup world (mostly in biz dev). 3) There is a strong need for people with real-world business, people management, and corporate relations experience in startupland. You can probably run a conference call much better than these damn whippersnapper programmers. 4) The only real disadvantage associated with being 35yo in startups is risk mitigation. If you have kids and a mortgage, it's gonna be much harder to move fast and jump on opportunities. I am mostly unencumbered and that's crucial right now (actually moving for 3 months soon, as we got into an accelerator). 5) I'll never forget when a startup colleague (23yo developer) expressed bewilderment when I called him (on the telephone!) to talk about some business matter. He promptly explained that his generation usually does this stuff over gchat. I laughed. He laughed. 6) I've been thinking about this a lot lately; we only have one short life to live on this earth and it friggin flies by, so why not reinvent yourself a few times, professionally and personally? Assuming you're smart enough not to risk your/your family's future well being, go for it.
SHIT NO!!! I'm 35, live in NYC, and one year into my first real startup that I co-founded. A few insights from my experience, as well as some challenges and advantages: 1) Everyone is younger than me and it's mostly humorous and enjoyable (I play much younger than typical 35yo's, tho). 2) I spent 10 years running a partnership marketing agency and I was lucky that I could easily translate my skills/experience/contact…
I should add: 7) Coming from the corporate/agency world, you'll be floored by the lack of basic business sense and planning found in the average early stage startup. Perhaps I was naive, but the severity of that mindset ("let's just make something flashy and get a ton of users and everything else will figure itself out!") surprised me at first.
As someone who has spent almost 40 years in high tech, and who has founded 3 companies after 30 (one after 40), I just don't buy the B.S. that you've over the hill after your 20's. I think any V.C. that buys that hype is going to miss out on enormous opportunities.
Part of the thinking is that once you marry and have a family, then 100 hour work weeks are out. Well, setting aside the discussion of quantity v. quality of work, now that my kids are out of school and out of the nest I'm free to work the long hours again, but this time around I have a wealth of experience and wisdom to bring to the table as well as the hours.