Comments on: Entrepreneurship, Age, and Money – Is It Better To Start Young or Wait Until You Are Older?

By: jackson

jackson — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:18:19 +0000

this is great

By: Srikanth

Srikanth — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 23:21:06 +0000

I can’t imagine becoming an entrepreneur when I am 40 or 50 years old. But, that is just me.

See this video by Guy Kawasaki on ideal age of an entrepreneur. Quite funny.

http://edcorner.stanford.edu/IndivRec?mid=1186&author=24

By: Tim Wiese

Tim Wiese — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 20:07:38 +0000

I think it does not matter whether early or late. Important is to try once a lifetime:
if you dont succeed you at least got the experience.

By: Ellen Weber

Ellen Weber — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 06:27:23 +0000

Great post because you support diverse ages and for different reasons. How sad to hear the young worry about being too young, and the old being too old! We are less apt to care about age if we focus on the acumen for the business and grow or use what we need to make it work. What a refreshing look at the possibilities out there — thanks!

Brain Based Business

By: Michael Anders

Michael Anders — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 05:34:43 +0000

Wow! This is interested for me. I am 19 and on the brink of starting my own business. I’ll let you know later which is right to start…young or old.

By: Penelope Trunk

Penelope Trunk — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 03:29:34 +0000

Hypothetically, let’s say that there are a lot of young people who start businesses and fail. What is the impact of that failure? Probably nothing. They probably had a good time with friends. They probably lived in their parents house so they didn’t need any money anyway, and reasearch from Babson and Darden shows that the best training for entrepreneurs is just doing it. So the young people who “fail” are doing pretty well for themselves.

By: Lewis Green

Lewis Green — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 20:55:55 +0000

I have worked in the corporate world, for another small busines and now run my third business. Except for 8 years in the military and nearly that many in college, that’s pretty much my adult life.

I don’t know that age has much to do with success and Penelope is correct: success depends on how one measures it. On the other hand, Penelope, as a Baby Boomer I think perhaps you generalize much too much. No generation has the power to make things either great or horrible. We all follow in the foot prints of those before us and simply do the best we can. Remember, we were once anti-extablishment and free spirits who blamed everything bad on the Greatest Generation.

Back on subject: My corporate experiences made me better at what I do; however, the funny thing is that I would rate my first entrepreneurial effort my biggest success based on the six-year adventure and fun that it brought me.

By: Financial Reflections

Financial Reflections — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 16:40:36 +0000

Indeed there is evidence that older people can do quite well with a startup. Wired ran an itneresting article on “two kinds of genius” – those who are young and those who are old:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/genius.html?pg=1&topic=genius&topic_set=

The Washington Post also had a great article on people in their 50’s and 60’s who became wealthy from businesses they ran.

I say if it calls to you, do it. Age isn’t the issue we might think it is.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:45:56 +0000

Michal,
Sorry, but I don’t have any research on segments.

Gael,
That is why I said entrepreneurship is personal. The problem with your example is that not everyone is like you. Lots of people start young and fail – people that might have succeeded if they had more industry connections and business experience. This post was written because there are lots of young people out there that aren’t ready. Many of these people will make great entrepreneurs later, when the time is right for them, but they think they have to do it now while they are young or else they lose their window of opportunity, because there are lots of bloggers telling them so. I wanted those people to undertand that it is fine to wait, and that in some ways you are better off starting a company at 35 than at 25.

I’m not against youthful entrepreneurship, but I don’t want young people to feel like it’s a now-or-never decision.

By: Michal

Michal — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 12:49:49 +0000

Excellent article! Although I don’t think the best way to talk about entrepreneurs is in term of avarages and medians. It doesn’t explain much about different entrepreneurial styles. The better way to do that is to split the group into segments (like a market). Do you know any research on that?