Even older actually, 52. (He was born Aug. 1937 and Garmin was founded Oct. 1989.) > In 1989, they pooled their savings and persuaded Dr. Kao’s Taiwanese relat

Even older actually, 52. (He was born Aug. 1937 and Garmin was founded Oct. 1989.) > In 1989, they pooled their savings and persuaded Dr. Kao’s Taiwanese relatives to invest seed money. With $4 million... That's $8.4 million in 2019 dollars. It takes a lot of money to start a hardware company, especially something as complex as a GPS. I'm wondering if Garmin would exist if he didn't have the personal savings and access to family money. One advantage of being older is having more money (usually). It was pretty standard that you used savings and/or relatives' money to do startups in the past. I think that a 20-year-old being about to raise cash from arms-length investors (like VCs) is a recent phenomenon -- only in the last couple decades. Jobs and Wozniak built the Apple I with personal cash, and got Mike Markkula's loan for $250,000 (in 1976) or $1.1 million in 2019 dollars only after getting a large order.