One of the most prevalent urban myths around entrepreneurship is that the founder has to be young. This myth is propounded by examples sought such as those of Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, this myth has not remained with the story-tellers alone but has magnified to the media and Venture Capitalists (VC) as well. The average age for winners of entrepreneur awards at Tech Crunch and Inc. is 31 and 29 respectively. The Cofounder of Y Combinator, one of the leading VC firms also believes that the cutoff remains 32 for entrepreneurs, beyond which they struggle with their funding efforts. Business research was conducted to gauge the veracity behind such claims. It was high-tech startups that were studied. These were firms which had a high-proportion of STEM workers, received VC funding or obtained a patent. Stunningly for many, 42 was observed as the average age for the founders of most game-changing startups. This has massive implications for the VC funds as middle-aged entrepreneurs have a far higher success-rate. Even for outliers like Steve Jobs or Jeff Bezos, who were young when they started off, their companies actually peaked much later, when these people were in their middle-ages!

Source:https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45?utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_medium=social

Uploaded Date:28 July 2018