My guess is that a lot of successful founders are people with experience in a given domain who founded a company to fill an unfilled need within that domain, an

My guess is that a lot of successful founders are people with experience in a given domain who founded a company to fill an unfilled need within that domain, and that most of these founders are on the older end. For example, I recently interacted with the founder of a $200 million company that sells infrastructure materials (e.g. fiber optic wire) to large telecommunications companies. To found a company like this, you need to know that the need exists in the first place and you are are at a huge advantage if you already have contacts in the industry. There are tons and tons of companies like this that you have never heard of because $200 million companies don't make the news. But they do make their owners very wealthy even if they aren't billionaires. Lacking domain experience and/or industry connections, many young people will often found consumer facing companies. These companies are often winner-takes-all and a tiny fraction of them will make their founders super wealthy. Plus, consumer companies by nature tend to be more well known because they advertise their brand and cater to consumers so they appear on the news more often. For example, AbbVie and Medtronic both have larger market caps than McDonalds, but they (intentionally) don't seek publicity, so you don't hear about them (and therefore their founders) much.