
The 20-year-old entrepreneur is a myth, according to study - nigifabio
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-year-old-entrepreneur-myth.html
======
merricksb
Previous discussions about this study:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16794228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16794228)
(241 points, 13 days ago)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16808737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16808737)
(93 points, 12 days ago)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16901184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16901184)
(29 points, 7 hours ago)

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jasode
I don't see the raw data of the study but I can think of one reason why it
contradicts the public perception of the 20-something founder: There's a
difference between B2B/SaaS/enterprise startups vs B2C startups.

The B2B companies are often started by older folks in their 30s and 40s. (E.g.
PeopleSoft human resources software started by David Duffield age 46 and
Siebel CRM software started by Tom Siebel age 41. Both were acquired by
Oracle.) Their accumulated years in the industry gives them the relationships
to convert into their first enterprise customers. Even more fundamentally, a
B2B startup solves a "paint point" for corporate customers. Therefore, it
makes sense that the founders would have spent many years working for
companies (as _employees_ in their 20s and 30s) to intimately understand how
to solve their problem. Being a 40-something founder is the natural timeline
for all that to happen.

However, many prominent B2C companies are started by 20-somethings (e.g.
Google (age 25), Facebook (age 19), Snapchat (age 21), Instagram (age 27). The
top-100 consumer-facing iOS & Android apps on their app stores are probably
done by younger founders. It's hard to think of consumer-facing internet
companies that were started by 40-somethings. (Netscape in 1995 with 50-year-
old Jim Clark would be an uncommon example.) The B2C world doesn't require
existing industry relationships; it's the viral spread of software to create
network effects rather than a 6-month sales cycle of B2B.

It's the B2C companies that get more coverage on WSJ, Bloomberg news, and even
tech sites like HN. Readers will click on more stories with "Snapchat" (B2C)
in the title rather than "Palantir" (B2B). Therefore, it seems like the
startup world is skewed towards 20-somethings.

~~~
padobson
If I was going to sum-up this comment, it'd be something like "Sell what you
know."

The viral growth of companies started by 20-something founders is fueled by
20-something consumers.

The growth of companies started by 40-something founders is fueled by
businesses with 40-something managers/executives.

~~~
lowry
Hm... Women make most of purchase decisions in households but founders are
mostly men. Something does not match up.

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geerlingguy
At 20, I had maybe 2% of the skills and knowledge that I’d need to be a
successful entrepreneur. In my mid 30s, I maybe have 30%. I’d say it takes
more luck the younger you are, and the 40s-50s is when talent and experience
can make a huge difference in success... since you actually might have those
two attributes by then!

~~~
jayess
I would agree with this. I've been trying to start companies since I was 12
years old and now that I'm in my late 30s, I've finally hit on a success. It
took a lot of tries and failures to figure it out.

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justherefortart
I started my first "company" at 12.

I've done 8 "real" startups since college. It's probably because I come from a
family of entrepreneurs.

Capital is the key, experience is secondary. It costs more to learn on the fly
but you'll try things you probably wouldn't otherwise.

My biggest downfall over the years (IMO) is never believing in the "it will be
ad/views supported" belief my friends had in the 90s. Having a background in
entrepreneurship with degrees in Finance and Econ (+ MIS) made me focus a lot
more on actual cashflow. C'est la vie!

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georgewsinger
Studies like this often ignore the power law. Consider the most valuable tech
companies:

1\. Apple: $570.7B.

    
    
      - Jobs: 21
    
      - Wozniak: 26
    

2\. Alphabet: $560B.

    
    
      - Larry & Sergey: 25ish
    

3\. Microsoft: $434B.

    
    
      - Gates: 19ish
    
      - Allen: 22ish
    

4\. Amazon: $365B.

    
    
      - Bezos: 30ish
    

5\. Facebook: $354B.

    
    
      - Zuckerberg: 19
    

What matters are the power law companies, not the average company. My guess is
that your ability to create an incremental company that is profitable
increases linearly as you age, but your ability to create a power law company
decreases exponentially as you get older.

~~~
aje403
Agreed.

Unfortunately, delusions of grandeur and a unicorn VC culture convince average
young people into believing themselves to be power law founders with power law
ideas. Thankfully that has changed a bit and it looks like the miracle men are
moving into blockchain. In reality, billion dollar+ ideas are rare, and
clever, delusional, and young people are a great fit for the helm.

When you're older, you have domain knowledge, leadership experience, and want
to take linear risks, not "sacrifice one of the remaining chapters in my life
for that chance".

~~~
gbacon
“Nothing defines humans better than their willingness to do irrational things
in the pursuit of phenomenally unlikely payoffs. This is the principle behind
lotteries, dating, and religion.” (Scott Adams)

~~~
aje403
Nothing more true than that. Except I'll add that people become a bit more
disillusioned by experience and willingness to take risk as they get older -
at least maybe with dating and startups, maybe not lotteries and religion

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arzel
i always enjoy reading these articles, because others like myself who have had
their startups acquired at a young age are beating the stigma.

but i feel as though in this day of age there’s so many “companies” who claim
to be “startups.” sure, they may have the experience, just not the capital..
and with that it completely changes everything.

anyways i’m 21 and had a “startup” (an app) acquired at 18. now back in
school, i can understand the articles perspective. i’m only 21 and i feel like
i only really have 10% of the knowledge, compared to someone who is 40 and who
has so much more experience then me.

~~~
RobertRoberts
I started doing freelance work when I was about 24, and didn't really start my
company until 26. But now that I am in my early 40s, I feel a lot more
confidence and patience. But I can say that if I hadn't worked on my own
business during those years, I wouldn't have the experience I have now with
people, my area of expertise and business in general.

But I do wish I had had some experience working at a larger corporation
though, but I feel that it would have made me complacent, and it would have
been harder to justify being "poor" to build my own company. Absolutely worth
it though. I hope you keep going and do well.

------
jcadam
I'm in my late 30s now, and the biggest impediments to starting a business are
family/financial obligations and the fact that nobody is going to fund a ~40
year old first-time entrepreneur.

So the only option is to work nights/weekends on an MVP (the slow way) while
holding down a full-time job, and hope you can get enough traction on your own
to attract attention/investment/etc. --> I'm finding this last bit extremely
difficult. Doing dev/product work as a moonlighter is perfectly reasonable
(though not necessarily fun after a hard day's work), I can sit up in bed with
my laptop and hack on code until I fall asleep... but add sales and marketing
on top of that and there simply isn't enough time to do things right (not to
mention, you really need to be selling during standard business hours --
except you can't because you're at your day job).

~~~
padobson
I'd suggest finding a co-founder. This can be difficult depending on where you
live. Go to a meetup and talk about your idea. Find someone who gets jazzed
about it and ask them to come on board. Give them some tasks to do to prove
they're serious. When they disappear and don't do them, go back to solo
founding satisfied you wasted your time on comment advice from an anonymous
stranger on HN.

------
staticelf
Personally I think the ideas you have when you are 20 and the ideas you have
when you are 40 are probably going to differ a lot. Since starting a business
is about doing something in the real world that is going to make money I am
not surprised to see that there is more older entrepreneurs than one might
expect.

The ideas you have when you are 20 are often more idealist and not necessarily
connected to reality as much as the ideas of a 40-year-old. This is coming
from a guy that has some years to go before 30.

~~~
justherefortart
I'm 44. Ideas are a dime a dozen (if you can come up with them). The hardest
part is the implementation and having necessary capital.

Comparing today to the mid 90s when I was doing my first college startup,
capital is relatively easy to come by and the expenses for setting up
servers/hosting are pennies on the dollar.

My issue in my 20s was not knowing how to get into businesses and provide them
tools they needed. I also ignored all the .com boom type stuff because I was
(sadly) too grounded in revenue.

Most ideas aren't unique, novel, or even new. It's how you deliver and the
service/services you provide. If you're benefiting people in some way, they'll
come running.

~~~
dbrueck
Amen to this. And even if an idea _is_ unique, novel, or new, it can
immediately be copied by just about anyone, so there's typically not a lot of
enduring competitive advantage in just an idea.

I'm in my 40s and have started a handful of successful companies and from what
I've seen at least, the miracle 20-something entrepreneur is close to a myth.
Obviously there are exceptional cases, but it often takes a couple of decades
of learning (and failing) to figure out how to create and grow a successful
business.

Part of it is because there are many different stages of growing a business,
and each one has unique challenges. You go from "we built something sellable!"
to "we have paying customers!" to "we are self-sufficient!" to "we are
expanding our market share!" to "we are trying not to slow our innovation!" to
"we are under attack from the competition!" and so on.

A pretty solid idea + excellent execution + real business model = really good
odds of success.

------
ainiriand
So what we get is a very big case of survivorship bias. Relevant:
[https://xkcd.com/1827/](https://xkcd.com/1827/)

~~~
autokad
could you explain how it factors in this case? because I don't think that it
does.

there may be some 'selection bias', by only including start ups that went on
to hire at least one employee, but I am OK with their operational definitions
in this case.

the story makes sense, and it jives with my observations when doing my masters
in computer science. In tech in particular, most of my classmates were not
entrepreneurial at all. Even if they were, the class curriculum was so hard
that nobody had time to work on side projects. the undergrads, not only didnt
have the technical skills, but they also didnt have any business sense either.

One of them lamented they hate business people who sell products but dont
understand it through and through. I told them I would rather have a business
guy who can sell any product, than an engineer who can make a great product
but not sell it. they still didnt get it.

~~~
lkrubner
For the most part, a person only gets invited to give a speech if they are one
of the lucky few for whom things went well. If your situation is more
ordinary, and you've failed, then you not invited to speak. Because of this,
we (the public) end up with a distorted view of things. Success seems more
common than it is, because we only hear from the successful. That is
survivorship bias. It's also why I've argued we need more honest stories about
projects that fail:

[https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/09...](https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Easy-
Steps/dp/0998997617/)

