George T. Wittman’s latest blog post
These days in the startup world, the entrepreneur is imagined as young and fresh-faced, straight out of college with some brilliant idea and a hip new company. However, that doesn’t mean that age really has anything to do with a successful company, and people have tried to figure out correlations between an entrepreneur’s age when they launched their startup and whether or not said startup was successful. Studies have been done by numerous foundations, institutions and universities. What they have discovered is that the average entrepreneur is 40 when they launch a startup. People over the age of 55 are twice as likely as people under 35 to launch a high-growth startup, and the average age of a successful startup with over $1 million in revenues was 39. Ultimately, age was less of a factor in entrepreneurial success than previous startup and industry experience.
The age that successful entrepreneurs launched their companies is wide indeed, ranging from 20 (Facebook and Microsoft) to 53 (McDonald’s). While experience is a key factor to success, it’s not required; just look at Facebook, Microsoft and Apple (none of these founders were older than 21). The most important factor for success seems to be how invested you are in the business and how passionate you are about it. Nonetheless, many investors will be reluctant to invest in a first-time CEO, as they tend to make a lot of mistakes. However, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule; the largest Harry Potter fan site, Mugglenet, was founded by a 12 year-old, yet has over 10 million unique visitors a month.
While age might not necessarily matter for entrepreneurial success, experience does, and that comes with age. Smart entrepreneurs who might lack experience could benefit from surrounding themselves with experienced mentors.
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