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The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

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Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#21

Post by RobertRoberts »

arzel wrote: post #16

i always enjoy reading these articles, because others like myself who have had their startups acquired at a young age are beating the stigma. but i feel as though in this day of age there’s so many “companies” who claim to be “startups.” sure, they may have the experience, just not the capital.. and with that it completely changes everything. anyways i’m 21 and had a “startup” (an app) acquired at 18. now back in sch…

I started doing freelance work when I was about 24, and didn't really start my company until 26. But now that I am in my early 40s, I feel a lot more confidence and patience. But I can say that if I hadn't worked on my own business during those years, I wouldn't have the experience I have now with people, my area of expertise and business in general.

But I do wish I had had some experience working at a larger corporation though, but I feel that it would have made me complacent, and it would have been harder to justify being "poor" to build my own company. Absolutely worth it though. I hope you keep going and do well.

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#22

Post by dbrueck »

justherefortart wrote: post #11
staticelf wrote: post #3

Personally I think the ideas you have when you are 20 and the ideas you have when you are 40 are probably going to differ a lot. Since starting a business is about doing something in the real world that is going to make money I am not surprised to see that there is more older entrepreneurs than one might expect. The ideas you have when you are 20 are often more idealist and not necessarily connected to reality as muc…

I'm 44. Ideas are a dime a dozen (if you can come up with them). The hardest part is the implementation and having necessary capital. Comparing today to the mid 90s when I was doing my first college startup, capital is relatively easy to come by and the expenses for setting up servers/hosting are pennies on the dollar. My issue in my 20s was not knowing how to get into businesses and provide them tools they needed. I…

Amen to this. And even if an idea is unique, novel, or new, it can immediately be copied by just about anyone, so there's typically not a lot of enduring competitive advantage in just an idea.

I'm in my 40s and have started a handful of successful companies and from what I've seen at least, the miracle 20-something entrepreneur is close to a myth. Obviously there are exceptional cases, but it often takes a couple of decades of learning (and failing) to figure out how to create and grow a successful business.

Part of it is because there are many different stages of growing a business, and each one has unique challenges. You go from "we built something sellable!" to "we have paying customers!" to "we are self-sufficient!" to "we are expanding our market share!" to "we are trying not to slow our innovation!" to "we are under attack from the competition!" and so on.

A pretty solid idea + excellent execution + real business model = really good odds of success.

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#23

Post by mayukh »

jasode wrote: post #12

I don't see the raw data of the study but I can think of one reason why it contradicts the public perception of the 20-something founder: There's a difference between B2B/SaaS/enterprise startups vs B2C startups. The B2B companies are often started by older folks in their 30s and 40s. (E.g. PeopleSoft human resources software started by David Duffield age 46 and Siebel CRM software started by Tom Siebel age 41. Both…

Yes looking at the raw data would be interesting. My hunch is that that there are many more 20 year olds starting companies (and going for moon shots). The opportunity costs are much lower when you are younger. The success rates might be higher in the older group but the younger group just by virtue of a larger sample (and going for moon-shots) might be why you see these outliers of multi-billion dollar public companies founded by 20 somethings

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#24

Post by jayess »

geerlingguy wrote: post #4

At 20, I had maybe 2% of the skills and knowledge that I’d need to be a successful entrepreneur. In my mid 30s, I maybe have 30%. I’d say it takes more luck the younger you are, and the 40s-50s is when talent and experience can make a huge difference in success... since you actually might have those two attributes by then!

I would agree with this. I've been trying to start companies since I was 12 years old and now that I'm in my late 30s, I've finally hit on a success. It took a lot of tries and failures to figure it out.

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#25

Post by alexpetralia »

geerlingguy wrote: post #4

At 20, I had maybe 2% of the skills and knowledge that I’d need to be a successful entrepreneur. In my mid 30s, I maybe have 30%. I’d say it takes more luck the younger you are, and the 40s-50s is when talent and experience can make a huge difference in success... since you actually might have those two attributes by then!

Perhaps you could say that when you're young, there's a higher chance you'll fail due to internal reasons, but a higher chance you'll start due to external reasons (ie. very few commitments).

As you get older, there's a lower chance you'll fail due to internal reasons, but a lower chance you'll start (eg. less risk-seeking, less geographically mobile, family commitments, debt, etc.).

By this logic then, I'd expect VCs would jump at the opportunity to work with older, more experienced entrepreneurs who happen to be free from those commitments.

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#26

Post by gbacon »

aje403 wrote: post #15
georgewsinger wrote: post #10

Studies like this often ignore the power law. Consider the most valuable tech companies: 1. Apple: $570.7B. - Jobs: 21 - Wozniak: 26 2. Alphabet: $560B. - Larry & Sergey: 25ish 3. Microsoft: $434B. - Gates: 19ish - Allen: 22ish 4. Amazon: $365B. - Bezos: 30ish 5. Facebook: $354B. - Zuckerberg: 19 What matters are the power law companies, not the average company. My guess is that your ability to create an incremental…

Agreed. Unfortunately, delusions of grandeur and a unicorn VC culture convince average young people into believing themselves to be power law founders with power law ideas. Thankfully that has changed a bit and it looks like the miracle men are moving into blockchain. In reality, billion dollar+ ideas are rare, and clever, delusional, and young people are a great fit for the helm. When you're older, you have domain k…

“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind lotteries, dating, and religion.” (Scott Adams)

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#28

Post by gbacon »

justherefortart wrote: post #11
staticelf wrote: post #3

Personally I think the ideas you have when you are 20 and the ideas you have when you are 40 are probably going to differ a lot. Since starting a business is about doing something in the real world that is going to make money I am not surprised to see that there is more older entrepreneurs than one might expect. The ideas you have when you are 20 are often more idealist and not necessarily connected to reality as muc…

I'm 44. Ideas are a dime a dozen (if you can come up with them). The hardest part is the implementation and having necessary capital. Comparing today to the mid 90s when I was doing my first college startup, capital is relatively easy to come by and the expenses for setting up servers/hosting are pennies on the dollar. My issue in my 20s was not knowing how to get into businesses and provide them tools they needed. I…

Execute, execute, execute!

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#29

Post by lukaa »

georgewsinger wrote: post #10

Studies like this often ignore the power law. Consider the most valuable tech companies: 1. Apple: $570.7B. - Jobs: 21 - Wozniak: 26 2. Alphabet: $560B. - Larry & Sergey: 25ish 3. Microsoft: $434B. - Gates: 19ish - Allen: 22ish 4. Amazon: $365B. - Bezos: 30ish 5. Facebook: $354B. - Zuckerberg: 19 What matters are the power law companies, not the average company. My guess is that your ability to create an incremental…

Uber- 30 years- Travis Kalanick Twiter- 30 years -Jack Dorsey. So i guess 30 is upper limit.

Re: The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study

#30

Post by jerguismi »

georgewsinger wrote: post #10

Studies like this often ignore the power law. Consider the most valuable tech companies: 1. Apple: $570.7B. - Jobs: 21 - Wozniak: 26 2. Alphabet: $560B. - Larry & Sergey: 25ish 3. Microsoft: $434B. - Gates: 19ish - Allen: 22ish 4. Amazon: $365B. - Bezos: 30ish 5. Facebook: $354B. - Zuckerberg: 19 What matters are the power law companies, not the average company. My guess is that your ability to create an incremental…

> What matters are the power law companies, not the average company.

Depends on your viewpoint. Average company can be pretty good for most personal goals that most people have.

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