> "Sometimes I do ask myself if I'm making the right choice," he acknowledged. "But if you don't take risks, there will be no reward." This is true, but one of

> "Sometimes I do ask myself if I'm making the right choice," he acknowledged. "But if you don't take risks, there will be no reward." This is true, but one of the most important things I learned in my 20s was knowing when to take risks. It takes money to make money, and if you're a starving founder waiting for an investor to cut you a check or trying to bootstrap your business with insufficient savings, you increase your risk of failure substantially. Patience is a virtue, as is focused and consistent saving, but in a lot of professions, like finance and technology, you won't have to work until you're 60 to build up meaningful savings that you can invest in yourself. If you've trapped yourself in the startup bubble, it's easy to convince yourself that your best opportunities are behind you by the time you hit 30, but the reality is that most businesses are not founded by 20-somethings. The Kauffman Foundation did a study called The Anatomy of an Entrepreneur a few years back and found the average entrepreneur was about 40 years old when he started his first company. Beyond being in a position to capitalize your own venture, one of the great advantages of starting a business in your 30s, 40s or later is that you're far more likely to have the domain expertise so many young founders lack. There are literally countless untapped, unsexy million-dollar opportunities that 20-somethings running around Silicon Valley will never pursue because they don't even know that certain industries and problems exist.