9 ms·

The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur (2009)

148 points by charlieirish 14y ago

bluedanieru 14y ago
What percentage of people who are not successful entrepreneurs but fit the other criteria i.e. middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance, are married and with children? Is it more or less than 60%?
- patio11 14y ago
  Substantially less. Four year degrees alone upper bound that at about 20~25% of the population, depending on what age cohort you use. As you add additional constraints the intersection only ever gets smaller.
  - dexen 14y ago
    The question could be phrased better, but the gist is: (number of married with children) / (number of members) in the population of ``middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance''. I.e., does being an entrepreneur correlate positively or negatively with having children, among the mentioned group.
  - bluedanieru 14y ago
    Whoops. Dexen got it. I mean, if you take the same set of criteria as before, less the requirement that they be a successful entrepreneur, what percentage of that larger group is married and with children? Without knowing that figure, the statement "60% of successful entrepreneurs are married and have kids" does not tell the story this (misleading, in my opinion) headline wants to tell you. I do not mean "what percentage of the population is around 40, educated, and married with children?"
kayoone 14y ago
60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.
- meaty 14y ago
  I've run two companies, have 3 children and have been happily married for 15 years. It wholly depends who you and your spouse are and how much time you put aside for your family. Your family are more important than any business venture - that's the key to success. Also don't base any relationship on financial benefits - many a time we've had literally nothing to this point we had to eat on 12GBP a week for a couple of months and put every bill off and that's not been a problem because we're good company for each other without any tangible items to amuse us.
  - kayoone 14y ago
    That is superb and i didnt want to imply that its not possible with my comment! There are a lot of factors in play and it can all work out very well! That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  The flip side of that is how many non-married founders crash and burn because they didn't have a supportive, safe place to go to outside the company. I'm not married - but my partner and I have been together for more than 17 years now. I don't think I'd have started our first company without her support and pushing. I definitely wouldn't have started my second after our first one crashed and burned! Stress happens in all relationships. For me anyway the stress of starting two businesses, and having one fail horribly, doesn't get into the top three most stressful events of the last 17 years. It barely makes the top five ;-)
  - entropy_ 14y ago
    This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married? This is not a criticism/flame/whatever, just curious.
sami36 14y ago
SO WHAT ? these numbers are pointless. I get it, they're trying to say that entrepreneurs are not unwashed hardened singles with no chance at a meaningful family life. I think this is misguided on so many levels. 1- Marriage is not an end goal for everybody. Sorry. Actually, the proliferation of divorces, close to 50 % despite the extremely high barrier of exit from that transaction should give you an idea. That's not even taking affairs into the equation. 2- So is having children, not that there is anything wrong with having kids. but the notion that not having kids is missing out on anything is false. The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption, it's time our social norms evolve from their 50s fantasies & catch up with the reality of modern life.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption No, it really isn't. It's about getting $Y out for every $X in where Y > X, and doing that in a sustainable and preferably an ethical manner. Disruption is the exception, not the rule in entrepreneurship, and success is simply (Y/X) * volume processed * lifespan of project. Some would even say that success is the net cumulative effect on society but that's a lot harder to measure. You could for instance make this about jobs created or amount donated to charity or something like that but most people simply use the formula above or some variation on it.
  - sami36 14y ago
    I beg to disagree. I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business. an entrepreneur would only assume the rather significant risk if the likelihood of payout (as denoted by your clever equations)is high enough. in a capitalistic society such as ours with millions of established businesses that would entail either 1 of these two options. 1- Make the way things are done normally, better. (Fedex vs USPS) 2-Do a completely new different thing (Facebook.) Both options are disruptive, although at different levels.
    - jacquesm 14y ago
      > I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business. And I think you're conflating competition with disruption. Entrepreneurship and business go hand in hand, you can't have the one without the other. Someone that risks their personal fortune to open a hamburger stand by your definition is not an entrepreneur, by my definition he or she is. And that's before we look at the possible futures where that hamburger stand ends up as a chain of stores because he innovated on quality or was exceptional in service. Disruption is not Fedex vs USPS, it's not Facebook competing with myspace for eyeballs. Disruption is AirBNB threatening the established interests in the hospitality industry, napster making record execs very worried and EasyJet causing increased blood pressure with all their fat cat competitors. Disruption by definition can only come when a market is established, but it is definitely not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship or running a successful business.
gsk 14y ago
This is in-line with my own experience as a 37 year old founder (married, one child). The biggest hurdle is "lack of willingness or ability to take risks" and the biggest advantage is "Professional networks". Most often, this is reversed if you are a young founder.
jacquesm 14y ago
Having a supporting spouse, a couple of kids and a mortgage are enormously motivating so this should come as no surprise. My first real business success happened roughly a year after my first child was born and I think that the biggest factor there was that having a kid made me realize that playtime was over. Nothing tells you to get serious as much as a tiny person that is utterly dependent on you for their every need. The HN illusion is that all successful people are in their low 20's and make billions (ok, that's a bit much but you get the idea), the reality is that they are the outliers and that your chances of finding success by some measure is higher later in life. But those are not the average applicants to YC. Beware of seeing everything through a HN/YC colored lens, there is a far larger world out there with an untold number of paths to success, HN is a great community, YC an awesome program if you fit their target demographic but these are not at all the only options.
- AngryParsley 14y ago
  "this should come as no surprise"? To me, the 60% figure seems like an invertible fact.[1] Imagine the article said, "75% of successful entrepreneurs are single." People would post comments similar to yours, but with other rationalizations for why the fact is true. "This isn't surprising. Single people have more free time." "This shouldn't come as a surprise. Single people don't have to worry about providing for a family." "This doesn't surprise me. Single people can take more risks." We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can be dangerous. The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little. I expect more from our community. The world is complicated, and our minds can't model it accurately all the time. Paradoxically, we should expect to be surprised. 1. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little. We all comment from our own experience, and as such these are anecdotal bits of evidence rather than hard data. Not every HN post starts out with a double blind study over a statistically significant portion of the population with splits per level of affluence and further splits to offset for geographic diversity. > I expect more from our community. Sorry to disappoint you. A community is the sum of its individuals, and slightly larger than that if you're lucky with the communities that you are part of. As such the way to improve on the status quo is to lead by example. Looking around me at the 100's of business people that I have contact with the vast majority (much larger than the 60% quoted here) of people with some level of success is in a relationship and a not-so-vast majority (but still substantial) have kids and are living a relatively steady life. For me the young kid that strikes it big is the exception, and as such I am not particularly surprised by this outcome. It would be much more surprising to me if the opposite were the case, your '75% of successful entrepreneurs are single' example would really turn my head because it goes directly against my personal experience. That's not hindsight, it is just reasoning from available data and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. We should expect to be surprised, but that does not mean that we have to actively twist available data so that we're surprised all the time. Sometimes a result is simply what is to be expected and I firmly believe this is one of those. But I can see how to some people here this comes as a surprising result because of the echo chamber aspect of being focused solely on a single community, especially one that contains a pretty substantial bias because of the company sponsoring that community.
madaxe 14y ago
60% of pilots wear grey socks. Wearing grey socks makes it more likely you'll be a pilot. Nothing to see here, move along.
- gurkendoktor 14y ago
  If there was a widespread hunch that wearing grey socks is detrimental to a pilot's job, then that would indeed be newsworthy.
  - killitwithfire 14y ago
    this. a million times this. not sure why people aren't understanding that this is the point of the discussion here.
- sami36 14y ago
  That's actually the most insightful thought I've read on this thread.
  - bob44 14y ago
    Most of your comments have been simply obtuse. This one is either a troll or downright idiotic.
    - sami36 14y ago
      & How should I interpret the fact that you've created this account 19 minutes ago for the sole purpose of posting this comment ? What does it say about your mental sanity ?
      - jasonlotito 14y ago
        I don't know who bob44 is, but you should chill out. Whoever he is, he's pretty much on the ball. > What does it say about your mental sanity ? Really? This is really what you think HN is about? Because comments like this bring down HN, more so than anything bob44 said. If anything, you just gave what he said credence. So either start acting mature, or leave. Seriously, "What does it say about your mental sanity?" Really?
cientifico 14y ago
If you can not make a relationship works. How the hell are you going to be able to direct people, or drive a project?
- yen223 14y ago
  I recall stories of companies who refuse to hire single men as salesmen for this reason.
  - mahyarm 14y ago
    Single men are also less likely to have a mortgage and other family expenses they are beholden to that can be used as leverage.
- vitalique 14y ago
  Really? Like a relationship is something a guy can just - bang! - 'make work'. Good luck 'directing' your SO or 'driving' your marriage like a project. I feel for both of you. Despite popular notions of 'being married to one's own startup', apples to oranges is not even close to comparing relationship to startups.
- camus 14y ago
  How is it related ? do you have sex with all the people you work with or what ? there is a difference between professional relationships and personnal ones , if you cant tell , i'm sorry for your family.
  - cientifico 14y ago
    Don't sorry for my family. Be happy for my clients. I treat them as family.
- randomdata 14y ago
  The biggest challenge in marriage is managing the external expectations. The shape of a marriage is strongly defined by social pressures and there is little room for personal problem solving within that framework. Business, on the other hand, is all about unique problem solving. Eccentric ideas that lead to success are celebrated and considered genius. It would be quite easy to believe someone could thrive in this environment while failing in marriage.
dmor 14y ago
Kauffman wonk reports make me want to stab my eyes out. But while you're here learn about the awesome entrepreneur who created the Kauffman Foundation, which is now the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship ($2bn endowment) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman
zyb09 14y ago
Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here. Depends on what the reader's preconceptions are :-) I know I encounter a fair share of idiots who think I'm too old to start a new company in the tech sector because I'm in my forties.
refactormonkey 14y ago
Just because you have wife and kids doesn't mean much. How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time? What I found interesting was: "Founders tended to be middle-aged—40 years old on average—when they started their first companies.". I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time? The flip side of that is that older folk are more likely to have had the time to learn the most effective ways to manage their own time, had the opportunity to get the kinks out of managing people, delegating tasks, hiring people, etc. Makes it a lot easier to get the space for quality time (and, indeed, realise that quality time is necessary for you to be the most productive in anything but the very short term). So, for me anyway, the answer is "quite a bit thank you" (Helped by the fact that we run the business together ;-) I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases. Or maybe it's having more experience in judging whether something is likely to be successful or not. I was much less nervous starting a new company this year than I was the last time in 1999. Large chunks of the fear go away with the addition of experience.
tpatke 14y ago
The survey included 5 high growth industries: aerospace, defense, computing, electronics, and health care. For me, personally, the only industry I am concerned about is computing. Including datapoints from outside my industry muddies the water. ...making it difficult for me to extract anything useful out of this study. For example, starting an aerospace or defence business might be easy if you have the right contacts - just win a government contract. ...something which is probably more likely to happen for older married men.
- davidw 14y ago
  Does it really make a difference anyway? If it were 70% for the computer field, would you rush out and marry someone and get her pregnant as soon as possible? Or if it were better to be single, would you sit your wife and kids down and explain to them that to maximize your chances of success, they're being "downsized"?
- Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
  While there are differences, aren't there also massive similarities? These are largely industries that require skill and talent as much or more than they require physical assets, they're all things where building up experience is likely to have benefits and so on. Looking at what happens in computing is useful, but it feels like we should be saying if someone can be a successful entrepreneur in healthcare under set of circumstances X, why CAN'T someone in that same set of circumstances be successful in IT. We need to be careful not be too insular, not to buy into our own myths (that of the teenage genius founder for instance), and not assume that we're too different or too special, as I don't think those things serve us well.
- pkorzeniewski 14y ago
  My thoughts exactly, if we would focus only on computing industry than I'm pretty sure the avarage age would be much lower, and because the avarage age of getting married is near 30 (at least in US), the number of married entrepreneurs, let alone with children, would be also significantly lower. Another thing is that industries such as aerospace or electronics are much harder to break through, you need much much more experience, and the knowledge isn't as easily obtainable as for computing.
elliotlai 14y ago
40% of Successful Entrepreneurs are NOT Married with Children
hiddenfeatures 14y ago
I need a child. Anyone got a spare one for me? :-)
- elliotlai 14y ago
  adopt me please :D
- sayYaeah 14y ago
  Does this also apply to women?
rb2k_ 14y ago
> Nearly 70 percent were married when they became entrepreneurs, and nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family. The question is if that's more or less than the national average.
- personlurking 14y ago
  > challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family. Researcher's personal bias? Someone can have a family and yet have no time for them.
- hooande 14y ago
  "Although only 51 percent of American adults are currently married, 72 percent have been married at least once." [1] Tricky number. Roughly three out of four of people get married, but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce. The number of entrepreneurial americans is "somewhere in there" (within +-1 std) so I think it's safe to call it a push. About 0.34% of people start businesses, a small enough sample that it's hard to draw any sweeping conclusions [2]. It's probably safe to say that starting a business doesn't have a serious impact on the prior or posterior probability of marriage. [1] http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans-unmarried.html http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans-unm... [2] http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial-rate-highest-in-15-years.html http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial-rate...
  - flyinRyan 14y ago
    > but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce. I'm not sure that's true actually. My feeling is that there are "serial divorces" who have 5+ failed marriages and drive the numbers way up.
wololo 14y ago
Here is the document (2009) they are summarizing: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thestudyofentrepreneurship/anatomy%20of%20entre%20071309_final.pdf http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thes...
Jarihd 14y ago
Most Entrepreneurs are married - i guess is because they tend to marry first(the teen-age effect) and later on in life start up with some business; also i guess they have successful business(60% as above) as they tend to devote more time to business than family later in life. I would seriously like to know: 1) How many entrepreneurs start up a serious business first and then get married - Do they prefer girl-friends over a wife ??? 2) Having got married - are they able to devote the same time to their business 3) Are they able to devote equally good time for children, wife and parents(when they fall sick) 4) Are children, wife and parents happy with these entrepreneurs 5) Do these Entrepreneurs always have a supporting wife and supporting children OR are have their wives and children compromised on their own personal life for the success of the entrepreneur Professional life and Personal life are two different things.. when you combine both; they together make up "Life" - or what accounts to as "Time of one's life"; and when one talks about both together; what one implicitly is talking about is one's "Happiness". 6) So, After 25+ years into entrepreneurship does the entrepreneur repent on having wasted life(time) OR is really happy thinking only about their business achievements. 7) How many such entrepreneurs having 25+ years of experience are truly happy with their professional life as well as personal life(wife, children, parents, friends). do we have any such numbers.
zerostar07 14y ago
Isn't that the average for the general population? I guess entrepreneurs are human too.
camus 14y ago
And how many cheat on their wife ? come it doesnt mean anything. CORRELATION never means CAUSALITY , are we on a serious site or on the daily mail ?
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/10/correlation_does_not_imply_causation_how_the_internet_fell_in_love_with_a_stats_class_clich_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...
akurilin 14y ago
I suspect there's no causation relationship between the two. I remember reading some time ago (no link, sorry) that older, more experienced, wealthier and better connected entrepreneurs will on average outperform the stereotypical 19 year old college dropout that we on HN love to talk about. It just so happens that as you move towards the 40s and 50s you are very likely to get married and have children, but they themselves are not the cause of your success.
epaga 14y ago
I don't understand people's issue with this statistic. It's not implying causality of any form. It's simply saying: "the common idea that the only successful entrepreneurs are workaholic young singles working days and nights is actually a misconception. Proof: 60% of successful entrepreneurs are married with children." That's not bad statistics, it's completely helpful, if nothing else for confirming a suspicion you may have had anyways. Bad statistics would be saying "so in order to be more successful as an entrepreneur, get married and have a kid."
readme 14y ago
For anyone reading this saying "That's not me" just remember... YOU ARE NOT A STATISTIC
tcgv 14y ago
That would be more meaningful if they provided us the anatomy of entrepreneurs in general, successful and unsuccessful. Then we would be able to find out if there is a correlation (not causality) between being married with children and being a successful entrepreneur.
petrel 14y ago
That is really a good news for every married man, mostly for those who think, life is more thought after marriage.
JimWestergren 14y ago
I think the correlation is like this: It is more older than younger entrepreneurs that have reached success and are considered successful. And we know that it is more older that are married and have children. BTW: I am 30, happily married and with 2 children.
bnegreve 14y ago
> [...] nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family. Well, this has to be compared with the number of people in their 40 that are married w/ children. And I wouldn't be surprised if this number was above 60%.
bdcravens 14y ago
I see a lot of folks jumping to explain away this article. My opinion is that a lot of the HN crowd believe that they are disruptors, bucking the trends. As a 35 year old married guy in Houston, reading HN tends to give me the idea that if I'm not in my early 20s and willing to drop it all and move to SF and work for at least 1/2 of market rate for a funded company building a social product that focuses on traction as opposed to revenue ... then my ship has sailed. Articles like this are a nice reality check.
chrisblackwell 14y ago
I find it hilarious that all of these articles feel they need to explain how to be successful, and how to grow a startup. Nobody wants to believe that the real secret is absolute determination, dedication, and a lot of hard work. It just can't be that simple!
pg 14y ago
I would be cautious about drawing conclusions about startups from this study. Startups are such a small subset of newly founded businesses that unless a study is very careful about how they select their sample, they're likely to get mostly ordinary businesses. And judging from what the people who did this study say about how they selected their sample (see page 8), it sounds like that's what happened. They say they "extracted randomized records by region." Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  Actually, the title I saw before the change (and now) said "Entrepreneur", not startup founders. I don't think it was misleading, though it's true that people could be substituting "Founder" for "Entrepreneur" in their heads.
- pav3l 14y ago
  >Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers. How should the study have been conducted? It is not obvious to me why selecting a random sample is not representative.
  - pg 14y ago
    I wasn't suggesting they should have conducted the study differently, just that if they sampled businesses generally rather than startups specifically, their conclusions about entrepreneurs don't necessarily apply to startup founders.

148 points by charlieirish 14y ago

What percentage of people who are not successful entrepreneurs but fit the other criteria i.e. middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance, are married and with children? Is it more or less than 60%?

patio11 14y ago
Substantially less. Four year degrees alone upper bound that at about 20~25% of the population, depending on what age cohort you use. As you add additional constraints the intersection only ever gets smaller.
- dexen 14y ago
  The question could be phrased better, but the gist is: (number of married with children) / (number of members) in the population of ``middle or upper-class background, 40 years-old on average, high academic performance''. I.e., does being an entrepreneur correlate positively or negatively with having children, among the mentioned group.
- bluedanieru 14y ago
  Whoops. Dexen got it. I mean, if you take the same set of criteria as before, less the requirement that they be a successful entrepreneur, what percentage of that larger group is married and with children? Without knowing that figure, the statement "60% of successful entrepreneurs are married and have kids" does not tell the story this (misleading, in my opinion) headline wants to tell you. I do not mean "what percentage of the population is around 40, educated, and married with children?"

kayoone 14y ago

60% had atleast one child when they were founding their first company, but that doesnt tell if they were still happily married after a few stressfull years of running their companies.

meaty 14y ago
I've run two companies, have 3 children and have been happily married for 15 years. It wholly depends who you and your spouse are and how much time you put aside for your family. Your family are more important than any business venture - that's the key to success. Also don't base any relationship on financial benefits - many a time we've had literally nothing to this point we had to eat on 12GBP a week for a couple of months and put every bill off and that's not been a problem because we're good company for each other without any tangible items to amuse us.
- kayoone 14y ago
  That is superb and i didnt want to imply that its not possible with my comment! There are a lot of factors in play and it can all work out very well! That being said, i started my first real company when i was 6 years into a strong relationship. 2 years later the relationship is gone and the company failed to catch on. I dont regret it and am still motivated to start new things, if anything this only made me stronger but it was very tough going through it!
adrianhoward 14y ago
The flip side of that is how many non-married founders crash and burn because they didn't have a supportive, safe place to go to outside the company. I'm not married - but my partner and I have been together for more than 17 years now. I don't think I'd have started our first company without her support and pushing. I definitely wouldn't have started my second after our first one crashed and burned! Stress happens in all relationships. For me anyway the stress of starting two businesses, and having one fail horribly, doesn't get into the top three most stressful events of the last 17 years. It barely makes the top five ;-)
- entropy_ 14y ago
  This is off topic, but I'm just curious. If you've been together for 17 years now, why are you not married? This is not a criticism/flame/whatever, just curious.

sami36 14y ago

SO WHAT ? these numbers are pointless. I get it, they're trying to say that entrepreneurs are not unwashed hardened singles with no chance at a meaningful family life. I think this is misguided on so many levels. 1- Marriage is not an end goal for everybody. Sorry. Actually, the proliferation of divorces, close to 50 % despite the extremely high barrier of exit from that transaction should give you an idea. That's not even taking affairs into the equation. 2- So is having children, not that there is anything wrong with having kids. but the notion that not having kids is missing out on anything is false. The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption, it's time our social norms evolve from their 50s fantasies & catch up with the reality of modern life.

jacquesm 14y ago
> The essence of entrepreneurship is disruption No, it really isn't. It's about getting $Y out for every $X in where Y > X, and doing that in a sustainable and preferably an ethical manner. Disruption is the exception, not the rule in entrepreneurship, and success is simply (Y/X) * volume processed * lifespan of project. Some would even say that success is the net cumulative effect on society but that's a lot harder to measure. You could for instance make this about jobs created or amount donated to charity or something like that but most people simply use the formula above or some variation on it.
- sami36 14y ago
  I beg to disagree. I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business. an entrepreneur would only assume the rather significant risk if the likelihood of payout (as denoted by your clever equations)is high enough. in a capitalistic society such as ours with millions of established businesses that would entail either 1 of these two options. 1- Make the way things are done normally, better. (Fedex vs USPS) 2-Do a completely new different thing (Facebook.) Both options are disruptive, although at different levels.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    > I think you're conflating entrepreneurship with business. And I think you're conflating competition with disruption. Entrepreneurship and business go hand in hand, you can't have the one without the other. Someone that risks their personal fortune to open a hamburger stand by your definition is not an entrepreneur, by my definition he or she is. And that's before we look at the possible futures where that hamburger stand ends up as a chain of stores because he innovated on quality or was exceptional in service. Disruption is not Fedex vs USPS, it's not Facebook competing with myspace for eyeballs. Disruption is AirBNB threatening the established interests in the hospitality industry, napster making record execs very worried and EasyJet causing increased blood pressure with all their fat cat competitors. Disruption by definition can only come when a market is established, but it is definitely not a prerequisite for entrepreneurship or running a successful business.

gsk 14y ago

This is in-line with my own experience as a 37 year old founder (married, one child). The biggest hurdle is "lack of willingness or ability to take risks" and the biggest advantage is "Professional networks". Most often, this is reversed if you are a young founder.

jacquesm 14y ago

Having a supporting spouse, a couple of kids and a mortgage are enormously motivating so this should come as no surprise. My first real business success happened roughly a year after my first child was born and I think that the biggest factor there was that having a kid made me realize that playtime was over. Nothing tells you to get serious as much as a tiny person that is utterly dependent on you for their every need. The HN illusion is that all successful people are in their low 20's and make billions (ok, that's a bit much but you get the idea), the reality is that they are the outliers and that your chances of finding success by some measure is higher later in life. But those are not the average applicants to YC. Beware of seeing everything through a HN/YC colored lens, there is a far larger world out there with an untold number of paths to success, HN is a great community, YC an awesome program if you fit their target demographic but these are not at all the only options.

AngryParsley 14y ago
"this should come as no surprise"? To me, the 60% figure seems like an invertible fact.[1] Imagine the article said, "75% of successful entrepreneurs are single." People would post comments similar to yours, but with other rationalizations for why the fact is true. "This isn't surprising. Single people have more free time." "This shouldn't come as a surprise. Single people don't have to worry about providing for a family." "This doesn't surprise me. Single people can take more risks." We like to project an unsurprised, unperturbed, and confident attitude. But thinking "I knew it all along" can be dangerous. The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little. I expect more from our community. The world is complicated, and our minds can't model it accurately all the time. Paradoxically, we should expect to be surprised. 1. See http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/
- jacquesm 14y ago
  > The number of hindsight-biased comments do surprise me a little. We all comment from our own experience, and as such these are anecdotal bits of evidence rather than hard data. Not every HN post starts out with a double blind study over a statistically significant portion of the population with splits per level of affluence and further splits to offset for geographic diversity. > I expect more from our community. Sorry to disappoint you. A community is the sum of its individuals, and slightly larger than that if you're lucky with the communities that you are part of. As such the way to improve on the status quo is to lead by example. Looking around me at the 100's of business people that I have contact with the vast majority (much larger than the 60% quoted here) of people with some level of success is in a relationship and a not-so-vast majority (but still substantial) have kids and are living a relatively steady life. For me the young kid that strikes it big is the exception, and as such I am not particularly surprised by this outcome. It would be much more surprising to me if the opposite were the case, your '75% of successful entrepreneurs are single' example would really turn my head because it goes directly against my personal experience. That's not hindsight, it is just reasoning from available data and I see absolutely nothing wrong with that. We should expect to be surprised, but that does not mean that we have to actively twist available data so that we're surprised all the time. Sometimes a result is simply what is to be expected and I firmly believe this is one of those. But I can see how to some people here this comes as a surprising result because of the echo chamber aspect of being focused solely on a single community, especially one that contains a pretty substantial bias because of the company sponsoring that community.

madaxe 14y ago

60% of pilots wear grey socks. Wearing grey socks makes it more likely you'll be a pilot. Nothing to see here, move along.

gurkendoktor 14y ago
If there was a widespread hunch that wearing grey socks is detrimental to a pilot's job, then that would indeed be newsworthy.
- killitwithfire 14y ago
  this. a million times this. not sure why people aren't understanding that this is the point of the discussion here.
sami36 14y ago
That's actually the most insightful thought I've read on this thread.
- bob44 14y ago
  Most of your comments have been simply obtuse. This one is either a troll or downright idiotic.
  - sami36 14y ago
    & How should I interpret the fact that you've created this account 19 minutes ago for the sole purpose of posting this comment ? What does it say about your mental sanity ?
    - jasonlotito 14y ago
      I don't know who bob44 is, but you should chill out. Whoever he is, he's pretty much on the ball. > What does it say about your mental sanity ? Really? This is really what you think HN is about? Because comments like this bring down HN, more so than anything bob44 said. If anything, you just gave what he said credence. So either start acting mature, or leave. Seriously, "What does it say about your mental sanity?" Really?

cientifico 14y ago

If you can not make a relationship works. How the hell are you going to be able to direct people, or drive a project?

yen223 14y ago
I recall stories of companies who refuse to hire single men as salesmen for this reason.
- mahyarm 14y ago
  Single men are also less likely to have a mortgage and other family expenses they are beholden to that can be used as leverage.
vitalique 14y ago
Really? Like a relationship is something a guy can just - bang! - 'make work'. Good luck 'directing' your SO or 'driving' your marriage like a project. I feel for both of you. Despite popular notions of 'being married to one's own startup', apples to oranges is not even close to comparing relationship to startups.
camus 14y ago
How is it related ? do you have sex with all the people you work with or what ? there is a difference between professional relationships and personnal ones , if you cant tell , i'm sorry for your family.
- cientifico 14y ago
  Don't sorry for my family. Be happy for my clients. I treat them as family.
randomdata 14y ago
The biggest challenge in marriage is managing the external expectations. The shape of a marriage is strongly defined by social pressures and there is little room for personal problem solving within that framework. Business, on the other hand, is all about unique problem solving. Eccentric ideas that lead to success are celebrated and considered genius. It would be quite easy to believe someone could thrive in this environment while failing in marriage.

dmor 14y ago

Kauffman wonk reports make me want to stab my eyes out. But while you're here learn about the awesome entrepreneur who created the Kauffman Foundation, which is now the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of entrepreneurship ($2bn endowment) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ewing_Marion_Kauffman

zyb09 14y ago

Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here.

adrianhoward 14y ago
Only 60%? 60% isn't really that high of a number to make a point here. Depends on what the reader's preconceptions are :-) I know I encounter a fair share of idiots who think I'm too old to start a new company in the tech sector because I'm in my forties.

refactormonkey 14y ago

Just because you have wife and kids doesn't mean much. How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time? What I found interesting was: "Founders tended to be middle-aged—40 years old on average—when they started their first companies.". I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases.

adrianhoward 14y ago
How much quality time can you afford to spend with them if you are trying to build a successful business at the same time? The flip side of that is that older folk are more likely to have had the time to learn the most effective ways to manage their own time, had the opportunity to get the kinks out of managing people, delegating tasks, hiring people, etc. Makes it a lot easier to get the space for quality time (and, indeed, realise that quality time is necessary for you to be the most productive in anything but the very short term). So, for me anyway, the answer is "quite a bit thank you" (Helped by the fact that we run the business together ;-) I always thought that starting a new company was driven by the fire of youth, but it seems like it is mid-life crisis that may also be responsible in many cases. Or maybe it's having more experience in judging whether something is likely to be successful or not. I was much less nervous starting a new company this year than I was the last time in 1999. Large chunks of the fear go away with the addition of experience.

tpatke 14y ago

The survey included 5 high growth industries: aerospace, defense, computing, electronics, and health care. For me, personally, the only industry I am concerned about is computing. Including datapoints from outside my industry muddies the water. ...making it difficult for me to extract anything useful out of this study. For example, starting an aerospace or defence business might be easy if you have the right contacts - just win a government contract. ...something which is probably more likely to happen for older married men.

davidw 14y ago
Does it really make a difference anyway? If it were 70% for the computer field, would you rush out and marry someone and get her pregnant as soon as possible? Or if it were better to be single, would you sit your wife and kids down and explain to them that to maximize your chances of success, they're being "downsized"?
Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
While there are differences, aren't there also massive similarities? These are largely industries that require skill and talent as much or more than they require physical assets, they're all things where building up experience is likely to have benefits and so on. Looking at what happens in computing is useful, but it feels like we should be saying if someone can be a successful entrepreneur in healthcare under set of circumstances X, why CAN'T someone in that same set of circumstances be successful in IT. We need to be careful not be too insular, not to buy into our own myths (that of the teenage genius founder for instance), and not assume that we're too different or too special, as I don't think those things serve us well.
pkorzeniewski 14y ago
My thoughts exactly, if we would focus only on computing industry than I'm pretty sure the avarage age would be much lower, and because the avarage age of getting married is near 30 (at least in US), the number of married entrepreneurs, let alone with children, would be also significantly lower. Another thing is that industries such as aerospace or electronics are much harder to break through, you need much much more experience, and the knowledge isn't as easily obtainable as for computing.

elliotlai 14y ago

40% of Successful Entrepreneurs are NOT Married with Children

hiddenfeatures 14y ago

I need a child. Anyone got a spare one for me? :-)

elliotlai 14y ago
adopt me please :D
sayYaeah 14y ago
Does this also apply to women?

rb2k_ 14y ago

> Nearly 70 percent were married when they became entrepreneurs, and nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family. The question is if that's more or less than the national average.

personlurking 14y ago
> challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family. Researcher's personal bias? Someone can have a family and yet have no time for them.
hooande 14y ago
"Although only 51 percent of American adults are currently married, 72 percent have been married at least once." [1] Tricky number. Roughly three out of four of people get married, but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce. The number of entrepreneurial americans is "somewhere in there" (within +-1 std) so I think it's safe to call it a push. About 0.34% of people start businesses, a small enough sample that it's hard to draw any sweeping conclusions [2]. It's probably safe to say that starting a business doesn't have a serious impact on the prior or posterior probability of marriage. [1] http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans-unmarried.html http://www.livescience.com/17462-record-number-americans-unm... [2] http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial-rate-highest-in-15-years.html http://www.inc.com/news/articles/201103/entrepreneurial-rate...
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  > but as we know half of those marriages end in divorce. I'm not sure that's true actually. My feeling is that there are "serial divorces" who have 5+ failed marriages and drive the numbers way up.

wololo 14y ago

Here is the document (2009) they are summarizing: http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thestudyofentrepreneurship/anatomy%20of%20entre%20071309_final.pdf http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedfiles/researchandpolicy/thes...

Jarihd 14y ago

Most Entrepreneurs are married - i guess is because they tend to marry first(the teen-age effect) and later on in life start up with some business; also i guess they have successful business(60% as above) as they tend to devote more time to business than family later in life. I would seriously like to know: 1) How many entrepreneurs start up a serious business first and then get married - Do they prefer girl-friends over a wife ??? 2) Having got married - are they able to devote the same time to their business 3) Are they able to devote equally good time for children, wife and parents(when they fall sick) 4) Are children, wife and parents happy with these entrepreneurs 5) Do these Entrepreneurs always have a supporting wife and supporting children OR are have their wives and children compromised on their own personal life for the success of the entrepreneur Professional life and Personal life are two different things.. when you combine both; they together make up "Life" - or what accounts to as "Time of one's life"; and when one talks about both together; what one implicitly is talking about is one's "Happiness". 6) So, After 25+ years into entrepreneurship does the entrepreneur repent on having wasted life(time) OR is really happy thinking only about their business achievements. 7) How many such entrepreneurs having 25+ years of experience are truly happy with their professional life as well as personal life(wife, children, parents, friends). do we have any such numbers.

zerostar07 14y ago

Isn't that the average for the general population? I guess entrepreneurs are human too.

camus 14y ago

And how many cheat on their wife ? come it doesnt mean anything. CORRELATION never means CAUSALITY , are we on a serious site or on the daily mail ?

flyinRyan 14y ago
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/10/correlation_does_not_imply_causation_how_the_internet_fell_in_love_with_a_stats_class_clich_.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/201...

akurilin 14y ago

I suspect there's no causation relationship between the two. I remember reading some time ago (no link, sorry) that older, more experienced, wealthier and better connected entrepreneurs will on average outperform the stereotypical 19 year old college dropout that we on HN love to talk about. It just so happens that as you move towards the 40s and 50s you are very likely to get married and have children, but they themselves are not the cause of your success.

epaga 14y ago

I don't understand people's issue with this statistic. It's not implying causality of any form. It's simply saying: "the common idea that the only successful entrepreneurs are workaholic young singles working days and nights is actually a misconception. Proof: 60% of successful entrepreneurs are married with children." That's not bad statistics, it's completely helpful, if nothing else for confirming a suspicion you may have had anyways. Bad statistics would be saying "so in order to be more successful as an entrepreneur, get married and have a kid."

readme 14y ago

For anyone reading this saying "That's not me" just remember... YOU ARE NOT A STATISTIC

tcgv 14y ago

That would be more meaningful if they provided us the anatomy of entrepreneurs in general, successful and unsuccessful. Then we would be able to find out if there is a correlation (not causality) between being married with children and being a successful entrepreneur.

petrel 14y ago

That is really a good news for every married man, mostly for those who think, life is more thought after marriage.

JimWestergren 14y ago

I think the correlation is like this: It is more older than younger entrepreneurs that have reached success and are considered successful. And we know that it is more older that are married and have children. BTW: I am 30, happily married and with 2 children.

bnegreve 14y ago

> [...] nearly 60 percent had at least one child, challenging the stereotype of the entrepreneurial workaholic with no time for a family. Well, this has to be compared with the number of people in their 40 that are married w/ children. And I wouldn't be surprised if this number was above 60%.

bdcravens 14y ago

I see a lot of folks jumping to explain away this article. My opinion is that a lot of the HN crowd believe that they are disruptors, bucking the trends. As a 35 year old married guy in Houston, reading HN tends to give me the idea that if I'm not in my early 20s and willing to drop it all and move to SF and work for at least 1/2 of market rate for a funded company building a social product that focuses on traction as opposed to revenue ... then my ship has sailed. Articles like this are a nice reality check.

chrisblackwell 14y ago

I find it hilarious that all of these articles feel they need to explain how to be successful, and how to grow a startup. Nobody wants to believe that the real secret is absolute determination, dedication, and a lot of hard work. It just can't be that simple!

pg 14y ago

I would be cautious about drawing conclusions about startups from this study. Startups are such a small subset of newly founded businesses that unless a study is very careful about how they select their sample, they're likely to get mostly ordinary businesses. And judging from what the people who did this study say about how they selected their sample (see page 8), it sounds like that's what happened. They say they "extracted randomized records by region." Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers.

flyinRyan 14y ago
Actually, the title I saw before the change (and now) said "Entrepreneur", not startup founders. I don't think it was misleading, though it's true that people could be substituting "Founder" for "Entrepreneur" in their heads.
pav3l 14y ago
>Randomization is not the way to select a population who by definition are outliers. How should the study have been conducted? It is not obvious to me why selecting a random sample is not representative.
- pg 14y ago
  I wasn't suggesting they should have conducted the study differently, just that if they sampled businesses generally rather than startups specifically, their conclusions about entrepreneurs don't necessarily apply to startup founders.