7 ms·

It's never too late to become an entrepreneur

59 points by Wista 14y ago

This will become a big trend in next 5-10 years amongst "Baby Boomers"<p>The growing interest in entrepreneurship and age is reflected in a study by the Kauffman Foundation that found that more people ages 55 to 64 are creating their own businesses than those ages 20 to 34.<p>As a percentage of total entrepreneurs, the 55 to 64 age group has grown the most. For example, in 1996 14.3 percent of all entrepreneurs were ages 55 to 64; in 2011, that grew to 20.9 percent. The percentage of entrepreneurs that declined most sharply were those in the 20 to 34 age range.

ommunist 14y ago
Being pushed to entrepreneurship is very different from making business as a personal choice. If you can do business, start early. When you are old, you have almost no time to learn from mistakes.
rjzzleep 14y ago
the single best sentence in the whole text "Seeing what everybody does, thinking what nobody does." i would change it a little. Seeing what everybody does, thinking what few do, executing like noone else
- Wista 14y ago
  I agree, I think another way to put it (to quote someone else), an idea is worth $20. I think execution of an idea (with pivots off early customer insights), brings it!
- seats 14y ago
  The way Schrodinger said it "Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."
  - rjzzleep 14y ago
    well yes, in his context seeing is the idea and, thinking is the execution, which might amount to written proof or the likes.
paulgerhardt 14y ago
Curious to see what percentage of the entrepreneurs in this study are starting 'small businesses' versus 'startups'. Didn't Steve Blank peg it at 99.7%?
- jacquesm 14y ago
  Small businesses: anything that doesn't grow at 6% per week and that doesn't have an incubator and a VC on board? It's quite possible to create a business that does several tens of millions in turnover and employs 100 people or more. It happens all the time and those businesses are started by a wide variety of people when it comes to age, gender, ethic background, location and so on. These companies are the economic backbone of many civilizations. Corporations are complex surfaces along many axis changing dramatically during their lifespan, there isn't such a thing as a clear dividing line between one group and another, only vague clustering and shifts. At one point during its lifespan Kodak was a small business, then a start-up, then a Fortune 500 company, then ripe for disruption and now they're dead. Calling a company a start-up is like calling a person a baby throughout a large portion of their life. A start-up is a phase, not an endpoint. Some people don't start out to do a start-up according to the SB or PG definition but find out after the fact that that was just what they ended up with. Some people start out to do just that and end up with a small business. It isn't all black and white, there are lots of shades of grey and there is a lot less control by the participants than you might be led to believe.
MojoJolo 14y ago
I'm happy that there are people in their late ages still doing entrepreneurship. But I wonder how are they managing the life of an entrepreneur with a family to feed, bills to pay, and age related issues (like energy decline). As I know life of an entrepreneur in a startup is very tiring and lack of sacrifice. So I wonder how they are doing it. It is also my reason why I wanted to start at an early age. I still don't have a family to feed. No housing, electricity, water bills to pay because I can still live with my parents. And I still have the energy because I'm still young. With it, I can focus solely on my aim which is building a startup/company.
- Wista 14y ago
  All good points, but what about someone in my situation, kids all old enough and have left home, location independent, low cost living base, 30 years of hard won experience across both failed startups and amongst Corporates (like IBM and Microsoft)? Energy is a big one, but I find this mostly psychological not physical?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- randomdata 14y ago
  Money to pay the bills may be less of an issue because by that age the investments made as a youth start to return a decent income all on their own.
  - MojoJolo 14y ago
    Good catch. Maybe those entrepreneurs she's talking about are those who have pretty good savings, benefits, or retirement pays. But a paragraph in her article said... "Many older adults are having difficulty becoming re-employed. On average, it takes them about one year and often that new job is at a lower salary with fewer benefits, and part time rather than full time. With an uncertain economy, job shortages in many areas, skill mismatches, ageism and companies doing more with less -- the challenges are real." In my understanding, she is somewhat encouraging those older adults to have a startup/small business/company. But she's encouraging those older adults that are in need of money (like to pay the bills) thus don't have that savings to start one.
benzor 14y ago
This is interesting given the article that appeared just yesterday on age bias in Silicon Valley [1]. I'd be inclined to think that the ageist mentality probably doesn't extend to the rest of the entrepreneurship world, although I have absolutely no evidence to support that. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215

59 points by Wista 14y ago

ommunist 14y ago

Being pushed to entrepreneurship is very different from making business as a personal choice. If you can do business, start early. When you are old, you have almost no time to learn from mistakes.

rjzzleep 14y ago

the single best sentence in the whole text "Seeing what everybody does, thinking what nobody does." i would change it a little. Seeing what everybody does, thinking what few do, executing like noone else

Wista 14y ago
I agree, I think another way to put it (to quote someone else), an idea is worth $20. I think execution of an idea (with pivots off early customer insights), brings it!
seats 14y ago
The way Schrodinger said it "Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."
- rjzzleep 14y ago
  well yes, in his context seeing is the idea and, thinking is the execution, which might amount to written proof or the likes.

paulgerhardt 14y ago

Curious to see what percentage of the entrepreneurs in this study are starting 'small businesses' versus 'startups'. Didn't Steve Blank peg it at 99.7%?

jacquesm 14y ago
Small businesses: anything that doesn't grow at 6% per week and that doesn't have an incubator and a VC on board? It's quite possible to create a business that does several tens of millions in turnover and employs 100 people or more. It happens all the time and those businesses are started by a wide variety of people when it comes to age, gender, ethic background, location and so on. These companies are the economic backbone of many civilizations. Corporations are complex surfaces along many axis changing dramatically during their lifespan, there isn't such a thing as a clear dividing line between one group and another, only vague clustering and shifts. At one point during its lifespan Kodak was a small business, then a start-up, then a Fortune 500 company, then ripe for disruption and now they're dead. Calling a company a start-up is like calling a person a baby throughout a large portion of their life. A start-up is a phase, not an endpoint. Some people don't start out to do a start-up according to the SB or PG definition but find out after the fact that that was just what they ended up with. Some people start out to do just that and end up with a small business. It isn't all black and white, there are lots of shades of grey and there is a lot less control by the participants than you might be led to believe.

MojoJolo 14y ago

I'm happy that there are people in their late ages still doing entrepreneurship. But I wonder how are they managing the life of an entrepreneur with a family to feed, bills to pay, and age related issues (like energy decline). As I know life of an entrepreneur in a startup is very tiring and lack of sacrifice. So I wonder how they are doing it. It is also my reason why I wanted to start at an early age. I still don't have a family to feed. No housing, electricity, water bills to pay because I can still live with my parents. And I still have the energy because I'm still young. With it, I can focus solely on my aim which is building a startup/company.

Wista 14y ago
All good points, but what about someone in my situation, kids all old enough and have left home, location independent, low cost living base, 30 years of hard won experience across both failed startups and amongst Corporates (like IBM and Microsoft)? Energy is a big one, but I find this mostly psychological not physical?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
randomdata 14y ago
Money to pay the bills may be less of an issue because by that age the investments made as a youth start to return a decent income all on their own.
- MojoJolo 14y ago
  Good catch. Maybe those entrepreneurs she's talking about are those who have pretty good savings, benefits, or retirement pays. But a paragraph in her article said... "Many older adults are having difficulty becoming re-employed. On average, it takes them about one year and often that new job is at a lower salary with fewer benefits, and part time rather than full time. With an uncertain economy, job shortages in many areas, skill mismatches, ageism and companies doing more with less -- the challenges are real." In my understanding, she is somewhat encouraging those older adults to have a startup/small business/company. But she's encouraging those older adults that are in need of money (like to pay the bills) thus don't have that savings to start one.

benzor 14y ago

This is interesting given the article that appeared just yesterday on age bias in Silicon Valley [1]. I'd be inclined to think that the ageist mentality probably doesn't extend to the rest of the entrepreneurship world, although I have absolutely no evidence to support that. [1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215