11 ms·

The Truth About Entrepreneurs: Twice As Many Are Over 50 As Are Under 25

148 points by pauljonas 13y ago

jvrossb 13y ago
Does anyone have stats for the silicon valley specifically?
- broham 13y ago
  Not exactly what you're looking for, but here is some recent sample data featuring Y Combinator - Age Rises for Some Tech-Firm Founders: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324000704578389103697378458.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732400070457838...
jpdoctor 13y ago
VCs tend to break investments into two classes: "Better, faster, cheaper" and "Brave New World" The "Brave New World" ideas put 25 year olds on equal/better footing than 50 year olds, since they tend to be everything new. The "Better Faster Cheaper" ideas leave the 50 year-olds with the advantage: They have a better sense of what the market wants, and what features are important/not important, since they've been working in the field about 6 times as long. There's difference which is much bigger though: VC's can take much bigger advantage of a 25 year old than a 50 year old. Edit: Notice the article was about an iPhone EKG (better, faster, cheaper) + 50 yo who used his own money.
- analyst74 13y ago
  > There's difference which is much bigger though: VC's can take much bigger advantage of a 25 year old than a 50 year old. This deserves more attention, in light of ageism concerns. If a 50 yo founder has used his time wisely, built up connections, deep domain knowledge, general know-how, decent bank account, there is little reason for him to take external investments. Even in the rare occasions he does, he is well aware of his value, and demand favorable term sheets. On the other hand, if a 50 yo founder doesn't have the confidence, connection or personal wealth to fund his own venture without a good reason. He is looked much less favorable than a 20 yo in the same state. In short, the older you are, the more is expected of you.
- orangethirty 13y ago
  And that's the fucking truth right there: VCs love to find young stupid (but bright) kids. They are easy to fool, will jump at any opportunity, and most importantly, don't know shit about money. Meaning that they can get them to work for peanuts. That is why the tech industry likes them young.
- pg 13y ago
  VC's can take much bigger advantage of a 25 year old than a 50 year old This is a persistent myth, but if you examine the math it doesn't work out. A VC firm could improve their returns by at most 2x or 3x by extracting really good terms from an inexperienced founder. But that's rounding error compared to the 100x difference between a big success and a small one. This is a subset of the more general rule that there is no "value investing" in startups. All the returns are concentrated in a few big hits, and a VC does well iff they invest in them, regardless of the terms. The empirical evidence confirms this. Google and Facebook are among the biggest recent hits for VCs. Both had young founders. But the reason VCs made so much from these deals is not that they extracted unusually good terms from the founders. In fact, the founders extracted unusually good terms from the VCs. The VCs made a lot despite that, because the companies were so successful.
  - jules 13y ago
    > This is a persistent myth, but if you examine the math it doesn't work out. A VC firm could improve their returns by at most 2x or 3x by extracting really good terms from an inexperienced founder. But that's rounding error compared to the 100x difference between a big success and a small one. Can you explain this? If by some method you can get overall 2x the returns, why does it matter that most of the income is in the big hits? 2x is 2x regardless.
    - meric 13y ago
      You could've put your money in a company that made 200x instead. (VC's don't have unlimited capital.)
    - InclinedPlane 13y ago
      The point pg is making is that it's not an averages game, it's a lottery game. Say there are two different people playing the lottery. Every day they buy a number of tickets. Person A buys tickets in a pool along with someone else. Person B buys tickets on their own. Thus, if Person A wins the lottery they'll have to split their winnings, whereas Person B gets to keep it all. OK, so who ends up being better off? The answer to that is entirely decoupled from their share of the lottery winnings, what matters is entirely whether or not they won the lottery. In terms of VC financing, the RoI from "winning the lottery" by hitching your horse to a small company that grows until a multi-billion dollar enterprise in a few years is going to dwarf any other aspect of investing and returns. Thus it's vastly more important to ensure that you are doing everything possible to maximize "winning the lottery" rather than trying to maximize the share of the prize you'll get. 2x or 3x may seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the 100x, 1000x, or 10000x that you'll get from being on the ground floor of the next big thing. For example, Horace Rackham was an early investor in Ford and he received a 1300x RoI, Peter Thiel received a 3000x RoI on his investment in Facebook, while Kleiner and Sequoia capital each turned $12.5 million into $2 billion through their investments in google.
pbreit 13y ago
Wadhwa must be taken with very large grains of salt as he is relentlessly pushing an agenda which is probably not completely accurate. How are they defining entrepreneur here? Including dry cleaning shops and law practices? And are they having the kind of success as Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Page/Brin, Yang/Filo, Omidyar, Musk, and on and and on and on?
- mindcrime 13y ago
  Wadhwa must be taken with very large grains of salt as he is relentlessly pushing an agenda I always take Wadhwa with a grain of salt... as you say, he definitely has some sort of agenda / ideology thing that he's constantly promoting. How are they defining entrepreneur here? Well, IF you assume that the rest of this paragraph applies to the same research mentioned in the first sentence, then no, they aren't talking dry-cleaning shops, laywers, etc. I'm not sure that's a safe assumption, but it is the way I initially read it. Research that my team completed in 2009 determined that the average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as under 20. The vast majority -- 75 percent -- have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup. Nearly 70 percent start their companies to capitalize on business ideas that they have -- which they see as a way to build wealth. And are they having the kind of success as Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Page/Brin, Yang/Filo, Omidyar, Musk, and on and and on and on? You sound skeptical... any particular reason so? Do you find it improbable that more successful entrepreneurs actually are older?
- seivan 13y ago
  I never trusted a man who poses with arm crossed in a fucking suit for his God damn twitter photo. He changed that recently, but I still don't trust Wadhwa - nor like him.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  Most 24 years old never achieve those levels of success either. $1B+ exits (not all are exits of course, but I'm talking personal financial impact) are a pretty narrow way of defining success. Most people would call anything 7+ figures winning at life, and I'm sure there's tons of those who are 50+.
futhey 13y ago
My first reaction is that this makes sense if you're counting restaurant owners, etc. Also, the media isn't going to draw attention to someone of average age doing something average, so the misconception seems expected, although I've met very few 50 year olds hacking away on their Web 2.0 startup.
- bdcravens 13y ago
  "Hacking away" is a narrow definition of entrepreneurship.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Never mind "web 2.0".
n0mad01 13y ago
does that not mean in other words that the utmost part of entrepreneurs is between 25 and 50 years old?
- lutusp 13y ago
  Statistically, one cannot locate a mean or establish a standard deviation using only the provided remark -- the values could be nearly anywhere, with some broad limitations.
dustingetz 13y ago
killer quote: "Ideas come from need; understanding of need comes from experience; and experience comes with age."
- wellboy 13y ago
  I'd rather say experience in corporate correlates negative with the ability to innovate. Who do you think is gonna create the next billion dollar company, someone with 20y experience in IT or an crazy student who thinks he can take over the world.
SiVal 13y ago
I'm going to guess--I have no proof--that entrepreneurs over 50 tend to be looking for a technology to meet a specific market need that has been eating at them for a long time, while those under 25 are more likely to be looking for a market need they could address with the brand new tech skills they've been developing. If I'm right, they could make pretty good partners.
- ignostic 13y ago
  There's some good research showing that such diversity leads to more conflict, less productivity, but better and more creative decisions. If I had to choose between productivity and a better/more creative outcome in the startup world, I'd personal think the the good, creative decision would be more important. (More studies: http://bit.ly/ZBpsxJ http://bit.ly/ZBpsxJ)
- pmarca 13y ago
  We tend to see the opposite. The high-quality young founders tend to be pursuing a single great idea. The high-quality older founders tend to decide to start (another) company first and then try to figure out an idea worth pursuing. The fact that the older founders tend to have more domain experience helps them with this strategy.
  - SiVal 13y ago
    Ah, interesting point. This isn't quite the opposite of what I was saying, but it's definitely different. You're saying the youngsters are passionate about solving a specific problem, which is opposite of my speculation that the oldsters have the problem in mind. But you aren't saying that the oldsters just want a vehicle for their technical skills, you're saying they want a vehicle for their business skills. Interesting observation....
DavidAdams 13y ago
I can't speak to "over 50," but I can speak to "over 40." I founded my first software startup in 1995 while I was still an undergraduate. I had the good fortune of timing it so that after a year and a half of toil and obscurity we hit the wave of the dotcom boom, and I was able to establish myself as a proven serial entrepreneur and have been able to found a series of moderately successful tech companies over the years. I'm 42 now, and I'm currently getting a new startup off the ground with three other co-founders who are also in their early forties. We have the good fortune of all having had at least one big success in our careers, but I can attest that our experience has been valuable, and we haven't had a particularly hard time raising money. I mention this because I think that there are a lot of people between 40 and 50 right now who are the first generation of true digital natives (for example, I have no idea what it was like to work in a pre-email office). Many of us weathered the dotcom boom and bust. From where I'm sitting, this cohort is quite well equipped to found successful tech companies, despite the fact that we tend to have families and children.
- jeremyjh 13y ago
  I think you and analyst74 make some good points here. It doesn't surprise me at all that VCs are happy to invest in a start-up with founders who have experience like yourself. At your age - that is going to be expected. If you were 42 and spent the last 20 years working in Big Corp - even if you did impressive work - I'm sceptical you'd be on an even-footing with a 25 year old who spent 3 years at Zynga.
  - drone 13y ago
    If you were 42 and spent the last 20 years working in Big Corp - even if you did impressive work - I'm sceptical you'd be on an even-footing with a 25 year old who spent 3 years at Zynga. I would disagree with this, depending on the focus. That is, if the person who spent 20 years at "Big Corp" was doing a startup in a related domain to "Big Corp," she would have a large network of contacts, and years of domain experience in the problem-space she's tackling. The person who spent 3 years at Zynga likely only has a brief experience of how to poorly run a company, and few contacts outside of the gaming world.
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tsotha 13y ago
It's also likely people over 50 have more money saved, so it's just easier for them to start a company. Both because they can use savings for living expenses and because potential investors are happier when the founder has some skin in the game.
nitroscott 13y ago
I'm amazed no one has commented on the fact that the pool of potential entrepreneurs under the age of 25 is incredibly small (most kids ages 0-18 aren't out there starting companies, and a big chunk are in college) versus if you're 50+ there is a much bigger pool (reasonably ages 50-75) and you probably have the means and connections to be more successful. I'm surprised it's only twice as many...
- wololo 13y ago
  was curious about this too: 21.5 million age 20-24 vs 58.9 million age 50-64 80.4 million age 50-74 (from https://www.census.gov/population/age/data/2011comp.html https://www.census.gov/population/age/data/2011comp.html)
- pmarca 13y ago
  There aren't that many qualified people over the age of 50 with the energy and determination to mount another startup effort again. It happens, but often people who have done well in their careers simply won't subject themselves to that level of trauma again. Plus, the marvelous yet infuriating problem that we have in this industry is that the people who succeed young often make a lot of money and check out.
gridmaths 13y ago
One thing that struck me about this article is the anti-pattern : Describe the distribution in words, then don't show the chart / graph. I refer to "Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as under 20. ... ". That takes a bit of parsing and visualizing to actually make sense of, and is pretty central to the topic of the article. That sentence describes some sort of log-normal bump distribution. But you'd want to compare it to the some-sort-of-lognormal distribution of population per age to draw a conclusion. The assumption may be "our readers are too math-dumb to read a chart". If true, why is that? Most people can read a map, so I wonder what percentage of people can read a population distribution and make some sense of it. How can it be improved? [ I created GridMaths.com [ early demo stage], so I'm actually interested in how to get Math concepts across to young people. ]
jared314 13y ago
If the data was collected in the last 10 years, I would be curious as to what percentage of the over 50 crowd of entrepreneurs had their existing retirement plans affected by the last two economic downturns, thus influencing their decision to go into, and in some cases back into, building businesses.
- HarryHirsch 13y ago
  Oh yes. There was this rash of startups in 2003 when there was the first big round of layoffs from chemical and pharmaceutical companies and venture capital wasn't quite as tight as it is now.
usablebytes 13y ago
I don't think there is much to these statistics; surely, it was different 20 years back and it will be 20 years from now.

148 points by pauljonas 13y ago

jvrossb 13y ago

Does anyone have stats for the silicon valley specifically?

broham 13y ago
Not exactly what you're looking for, but here is some recent sample data featuring Y Combinator - Age Rises for Some Tech-Firm Founders: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324000704578389103697378458.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732400070457838...

jpdoctor 13y ago

VCs tend to break investments into two classes: "Better, faster, cheaper" and "Brave New World" The "Brave New World" ideas put 25 year olds on equal/better footing than 50 year olds, since they tend to be everything new. The "Better Faster Cheaper" ideas leave the 50 year-olds with the advantage: They have a better sense of what the market wants, and what features are important/not important, since they've been working in the field about 6 times as long. There's difference which is much bigger though: VC's can take much bigger advantage of a 25 year old than a 50 year old. Edit: Notice the article was about an iPhone EKG (better, faster, cheaper) + 50 yo who used his own money.

analyst74 13y ago
> There's difference which is much bigger though: VC's can take much bigger advantage of a 25 year old than a 50 year old. This deserves more attention, in light of ageism concerns. If a 50 yo founder has used his time wisely, built up connections, deep domain knowledge, general know-how, decent bank account, there is little reason for him to take external investments. Even in the rare occasions he does, he is well aware of his value, and demand favorable term sheets. On the other hand, if a 50 yo founder doesn't have the confidence, connection or personal wealth to fund his own venture without a good reason. He is looked much less favorable than a 20 yo in the same state. In short, the older you are, the more is expected of you.
orangethirty 13y ago
And that's the fucking truth right there: VCs love to find young stupid (but bright) kids. They are easy to fool, will jump at any opportunity, and most importantly, don't know shit about money. Meaning that they can get them to work for peanuts. That is why the tech industry likes them young.
pg 13y ago
VC's can take much bigger advantage of a 25 year old than a 50 year old This is a persistent myth, but if you examine the math it doesn't work out. A VC firm could improve their returns by at most 2x or 3x by extracting really good terms from an inexperienced founder. But that's rounding error compared to the 100x difference between a big success and a small one. This is a subset of the more general rule that there is no "value investing" in startups. All the returns are concentrated in a few big hits, and a VC does well iff they invest in them, regardless of the terms. The empirical evidence confirms this. Google and Facebook are among the biggest recent hits for VCs. Both had young founders. But the reason VCs made so much from these deals is not that they extracted unusually good terms from the founders. In fact, the founders extracted unusually good terms from the VCs. The VCs made a lot despite that, because the companies were so successful.
- jules 13y ago
  > This is a persistent myth, but if you examine the math it doesn't work out. A VC firm could improve their returns by at most 2x or 3x by extracting really good terms from an inexperienced founder. But that's rounding error compared to the 100x difference between a big success and a small one. Can you explain this? If by some method you can get overall 2x the returns, why does it matter that most of the income is in the big hits? 2x is 2x regardless.
  - meric 13y ago
    You could've put your money in a company that made 200x instead. (VC's don't have unlimited capital.)
  - InclinedPlane 13y ago
    The point pg is making is that it's not an averages game, it's a lottery game. Say there are two different people playing the lottery. Every day they buy a number of tickets. Person A buys tickets in a pool along with someone else. Person B buys tickets on their own. Thus, if Person A wins the lottery they'll have to split their winnings, whereas Person B gets to keep it all. OK, so who ends up being better off? The answer to that is entirely decoupled from their share of the lottery winnings, what matters is entirely whether or not they won the lottery. In terms of VC financing, the RoI from "winning the lottery" by hitching your horse to a small company that grows until a multi-billion dollar enterprise in a few years is going to dwarf any other aspect of investing and returns. Thus it's vastly more important to ensure that you are doing everything possible to maximize "winning the lottery" rather than trying to maximize the share of the prize you'll get. 2x or 3x may seem like a lot, but it's nothing compared to the 100x, 1000x, or 10000x that you'll get from being on the ground floor of the next big thing. For example, Horace Rackham was an early investor in Ford and he received a 1300x RoI, Peter Thiel received a 3000x RoI on his investment in Facebook, while Kleiner and Sequoia capital each turned $12.5 million into $2 billion through their investments in google.

pbreit 13y ago

Wadhwa must be taken with very large grains of salt as he is relentlessly pushing an agenda which is probably not completely accurate. How are they defining entrepreneur here? Including dry cleaning shops and law practices? And are they having the kind of success as Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Page/Brin, Yang/Filo, Omidyar, Musk, and on and and on and on?

mindcrime 13y ago
Wadhwa must be taken with very large grains of salt as he is relentlessly pushing an agenda I always take Wadhwa with a grain of salt... as you say, he definitely has some sort of agenda / ideology thing that he's constantly promoting. How are they defining entrepreneur here? Well, IF you assume that the rest of this paragraph applies to the same research mentioned in the first sentence, then no, they aren't talking dry-cleaning shops, laywers, etc. I'm not sure that's a safe assumption, but it is the way I initially read it. Research that my team completed in 2009 determined that the average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as under 20. The vast majority -- 75 percent -- have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup. Nearly 70 percent start their companies to capitalize on business ideas that they have -- which they see as a way to build wealth. And are they having the kind of success as Zuckerberg, Gates, Jobs, Page/Brin, Yang/Filo, Omidyar, Musk, and on and and on and on? You sound skeptical... any particular reason so? Do you find it improbable that more successful entrepreneurs actually are older?
seivan 13y ago
I never trusted a man who poses with arm crossed in a fucking suit for his God damn twitter photo. He changed that recently, but I still don't trust Wadhwa - nor like him.
bdcravens 13y ago
Most 24 years old never achieve those levels of success either. $1B+ exits (not all are exits of course, but I'm talking personal financial impact) are a pretty narrow way of defining success. Most people would call anything 7+ figures winning at life, and I'm sure there's tons of those who are 50+.

futhey 13y ago

My first reaction is that this makes sense if you're counting restaurant owners, etc. Also, the media isn't going to draw attention to someone of average age doing something average, so the misconception seems expected, although I've met very few 50 year olds hacking away on their Web 2.0 startup.

bdcravens 13y ago
"Hacking away" is a narrow definition of entrepreneurship.
- mseebach 13y ago
  Never mind "web 2.0".

n0mad01 13y ago

does that not mean in other words that the utmost part of entrepreneurs is between 25 and 50 years old?

lutusp 13y ago
Statistically, one cannot locate a mean or establish a standard deviation using only the provided remark -- the values could be nearly anywhere, with some broad limitations.

dustingetz 13y ago

killer quote: "Ideas come from need; understanding of need comes from experience; and experience comes with age."

wellboy 13y ago
I'd rather say experience in corporate correlates negative with the ability to innovate. Who do you think is gonna create the next billion dollar company, someone with 20y experience in IT or an crazy student who thinks he can take over the world.

SiVal 13y ago

I'm going to guess--I have no proof--that entrepreneurs over 50 tend to be looking for a technology to meet a specific market need that has been eating at them for a long time, while those under 25 are more likely to be looking for a market need they could address with the brand new tech skills they've been developing. If I'm right, they could make pretty good partners.

ignostic 13y ago
There's some good research showing that such diversity leads to more conflict, less productivity, but better and more creative decisions. If I had to choose between productivity and a better/more creative outcome in the startup world, I'd personal think the the good, creative decision would be more important. (More studies: http://bit.ly/ZBpsxJ http://bit.ly/ZBpsxJ)
pmarca 13y ago
We tend to see the opposite. The high-quality young founders tend to be pursuing a single great idea. The high-quality older founders tend to decide to start (another) company first and then try to figure out an idea worth pursuing. The fact that the older founders tend to have more domain experience helps them with this strategy.
- SiVal 13y ago
  Ah, interesting point. This isn't quite the opposite of what I was saying, but it's definitely different. You're saying the youngsters are passionate about solving a specific problem, which is opposite of my speculation that the oldsters have the problem in mind. But you aren't saying that the oldsters just want a vehicle for their technical skills, you're saying they want a vehicle for their business skills. Interesting observation....

DavidAdams 13y ago

I can't speak to "over 50," but I can speak to "over 40." I founded my first software startup in 1995 while I was still an undergraduate. I had the good fortune of timing it so that after a year and a half of toil and obscurity we hit the wave of the dotcom boom, and I was able to establish myself as a proven serial entrepreneur and have been able to found a series of moderately successful tech companies over the years. I'm 42 now, and I'm currently getting a new startup off the ground with three other co-founders who are also in their early forties. We have the good fortune of all having had at least one big success in our careers, but I can attest that our experience has been valuable, and we haven't had a particularly hard time raising money. I mention this because I think that there are a lot of people between 40 and 50 right now who are the first generation of true digital natives (for example, I have no idea what it was like to work in a pre-email office). Many of us weathered the dotcom boom and bust. From where I'm sitting, this cohort is quite well equipped to found successful tech companies, despite the fact that we tend to have families and children.

jeremyjh 13y ago
I think you and analyst74 make some good points here. It doesn't surprise me at all that VCs are happy to invest in a start-up with founders who have experience like yourself. At your age - that is going to be expected. If you were 42 and spent the last 20 years working in Big Corp - even if you did impressive work - I'm sceptical you'd be on an even-footing with a 25 year old who spent 3 years at Zynga.
- drone 13y ago
  If you were 42 and spent the last 20 years working in Big Corp - even if you did impressive work - I'm sceptical you'd be on an even-footing with a 25 year old who spent 3 years at Zynga. I would disagree with this, depending on the focus. That is, if the person who spent 20 years at "Big Corp" was doing a startup in a related domain to "Big Corp," she would have a large network of contacts, and years of domain experience in the problem-space she's tackling. The person who spent 3 years at Zynga likely only has a brief experience of how to poorly run a company, and few contacts outside of the gaming world.
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tsotha 13y ago

It's also likely people over 50 have more money saved, so it's just easier for them to start a company. Both because they can use savings for living expenses and because potential investors are happier when the founder has some skin in the game.

nitroscott 13y ago

I'm amazed no one has commented on the fact that the pool of potential entrepreneurs under the age of 25 is incredibly small (most kids ages 0-18 aren't out there starting companies, and a big chunk are in college) versus if you're 50+ there is a much bigger pool (reasonably ages 50-75) and you probably have the means and connections to be more successful. I'm surprised it's only twice as many...

wololo 13y ago
was curious about this too: 21.5 million age 20-24 vs 58.9 million age 50-64 80.4 million age 50-74 (from https://www.census.gov/population/age/data/2011comp.html https://www.census.gov/population/age/data/2011comp.html)
pmarca 13y ago
There aren't that many qualified people over the age of 50 with the energy and determination to mount another startup effort again. It happens, but often people who have done well in their careers simply won't subject themselves to that level of trauma again. Plus, the marvelous yet infuriating problem that we have in this industry is that the people who succeed young often make a lot of money and check out.

gridmaths 13y ago

One thing that struck me about this article is the anti-pattern : Describe the distribution in words, then don't show the chart / graph. I refer to "Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25; and twice as many, over 60 as under 20. ... ". That takes a bit of parsing and visualizing to actually make sense of, and is pretty central to the topic of the article. That sentence describes some sort of log-normal bump distribution. But you'd want to compare it to the some-sort-of-lognormal distribution of population per age to draw a conclusion. The assumption may be "our readers are too math-dumb to read a chart". If true, why is that? Most people can read a map, so I wonder what percentage of people can read a population distribution and make some sense of it. How can it be improved? [ I created GridMaths.com [ early demo stage], so I'm actually interested in how to get Math concepts across to young people. ]

jared314 13y ago

If the data was collected in the last 10 years, I would be curious as to what percentage of the over 50 crowd of entrepreneurs had their existing retirement plans affected by the last two economic downturns, thus influencing their decision to go into, and in some cases back into, building businesses.

HarryHirsch 13y ago
Oh yes. There was this rash of startups in 2003 when there was the first big round of layoffs from chemical and pharmaceutical companies and venture capital wasn't quite as tight as it is now.

usablebytes 13y ago

I don't think there is much to these statistics; surely, it was different 20 years back and it will be 20 years from now.