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Age and high-growth entrepreneurship
- is0tope 5y agoI couldn't find it in the paper, but I wonder how having a family affects this?
- 0xfaded 5y agoI think family can be an indication of stability. Existing obligations can be factored in ahead of time. The alternative (and this was my case), you can start something in your mid to late 20s, and if wanting a family becomes a factor while the company is neither taking off nor dying, that introduces a new variable. I decided to leave (there were many more reasons), but if I was in a stable situation at 45 maybe I would have decided differently.
- Toine 5y agoI guess it heavily depends on the person. I got a huge boost of motivation and energy to launch something when I got my first kid. I guess it's the opposite for others.
- jay_kyburz 5y agoMore pressure to ship, but I went 3 days a week when my kids arrived and I don't regret it at all. Now my kids well established in school and have their own interests, I'm ready to focus on work again.
- moron4hire 5y agoWhat do you mean? Like having a wife and kids? Or having rich parents and uncles who can pay your expenses while you take risks? Cuz the latter seems like the one most successful founders share.
- vmception 5y agoRegarding the latter, its not the subsidize chance to take a risk, its the subsidized chances, plural. There is a selective evolution towards already wealthy people because everyone else gets one chance and is shut out for the next decade or so working for wages, and god forbid they pursue or get involved in any relationship rite of passage over that next decade, greatly reducing the probability of being able to take a risk without consequences to the relationship.
- moron4hire 5y agoExcellent point
- bennysomething 5y agoExcept that 80 percent of millionaires in the USA are first generation affluent. Google it, primary source is research conducted for the book the millionaire next door.
- moron4hire 5y agoExcept we're not talking about millionaires.
- claudiulodro 5y agoThe impression I got from that book is that the average millionaire is someone in their late 50s just about to retire, and they need that million+ for retirement. Statistically true, but not really relevant to entrepreneurship IMHO.
- spaetzleesser 5y agoMillionaires is probably not the right measure. Look at entrepreneurs. From my observation a lot of them come from families where the parents can help if the business doesn’t work out. This help may come in the form of having a place to move back, help with rent, buy a car, have relatives that have some money to invest. You don’t need millionaire parents for that but it makes a big difference.
- beckingz 5y agoThe mean age at founding a 1 in 1000 fastest growing organization is 45. Which makes sense, because industry connections for talent and sales are incredibly valuable.
- Toine 5y agoAnd this : "Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success"
- jeffreyrogers 5y agoMakes sense that the high profile founders that started companies when young were largely inventing new industries from scratch. I'm actually struggling to think of a case where that's not true. Stripe kind of fits, but that's arguable.
- beckingz 5y agoAll the examples I can think of didn't actually start a new industry. They did get in early on a new industry, but they didn't start it even if they ended up defining it.
- pessimizer 5y agoFacebook and Google were latecomers. Facebook just executed better than Friendster and Myspace, and Google had their link-counting gimmick.
- denton-scratch 5y ago> Google had their link-counting gimmick In the early years, Google was a breath of fresh air; their product (search engine) was miles better than the competition, it looked better, and it wasn't encumbered with ads. That was no gimmick. It's sad, what things have come to.
- jasode 5y agoSome previous threads on the Azoulay/Jones/Kim paper: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16902662 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16902662
- rkk3 5y agoThe public only knows consumer tech startups, which imo is like catching lightning in a bottle & selling it. The key idea/insight probably matters more in consumer, which can benefit from being young or around young people. You also don't get as much of a benefit from experience & professional network as you do in other verticals; B2B SAAS, Deep Tech etc. Without making the distinction between types of companies, pieces like this are silly pop-sci.
- lumost 5y agoYoung consumers are also more open to new consumer tech than older customers. Being young and starting a consumer tech company is a lot like having unique industrial knowledge of your target customer. If you look at how many early stage consumer tech companies were implemented - many of them also throw economics out the window when they are first starting e.g free video hosting and serving without a plan to charge money. I suspect that younger founders are more believable to VCs and investors when they pitch these kinds of ideas then more experienced founders. It's easier to think that inexperienced founders will wise up while thinking that experienced founders never did.
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- georgewsinger 5y agoStudying "1-in-1,000 fastest growing new ventures" is completely misunderstanding tech. Startup returns are about power-laws and extraordinary outliers. If we instead study the age of founders of tech companies which actually generated almost all of the ecosystem gains over the past few decades: 1. Apple: $2.65T - Jobs: 21 - Woz: 26 2. Alphabet: $1.73T - Larry/Sergey: 25ish 3. Microsoft: $2.22T - Gates: 19 - Allen: 22 4. Amazon: $1.45T - Bezos: 29 5. Facebook: $0.84T - Zuckerberg: 19 Looking at just the age of founders instead of other substance is stupid. But if we're just looking at age and nothing else, then younger founders make for better outliers, and generating outliers is the whole point of this endeavor. ----- EDIT: With its high market cap, Tesla belongs on this list, and actually had some older founders. Problem: the older founders left the company/were forcibly removed, didn't retain much equity, and aren't credited with much early success when they were actually in charge. Still, some interesting data points. Tesla: $0.94T - Elon Musk: 32 - J.B. Straubel: 28 - Martin Eberhard: 43 (forcibly removed due to late/over budget Roadsters) - Marc Tappening: 39 (left Tesla in 2008)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Gatsky 5y ago> The mean age at founding for the 1-in-1,000 fastest growing new ventures is 45.0 How many of us out there are whispering to themselves "There's still hope..."
- srcreigh 5y agoWho's to say a small number of successful-since-25 entrepreneurs just keep making successful high growth companies every 5-10 years until they're 55+? Maybe they do it more frequently on average when they're older than when they're younger. It would be much more interesting to look at the age when people first achieve high growth success.