
How old is too old to start a company, or create and market a killer app? - k0n2ad
I've heard many times that "You're never too old," but it's often obscured by frequently hearing about teenagers and college kids making a fortune with their start-ups (started coding when they were 9, etc.). What about people who've past these stages in their life? Any motivating success stories?
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jacquesm
I know several people that only really made it big when they were in their
50's. I think for the most part those are relatively conservative businesses,
not billion dollar affair from 'winner takes all' bets, but simply identifying
a niche, building a product and then selling the hell out of it. (and with not
billions I mean earning several million annually before taxes, which I think
is pretty good by any standard).

The businesses that you start when you're 20-30, 30-40 or 40-50 in many ways
reflect the amount of energy and the knowledge that you've gathered over the
years.

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lacker
Sam Walton started Walmart when he was 44.

Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 61.

Sakichi Toyoda started Toyota when he was 59.

It's not really rare at all to start successful companies when you're older.
Just go look at the history of big companies and you'll find plenty of
examples.

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DanielBMarkham
IIRC, Sanders used to drive a beat-up old car around to all of his
franchisees, checking to make sure the gravy was just perfect and the chicken
was being made correctly.

When it wasn't, they said that he would curse enough to make a sailor blush,
kicking pots and pans all around the kitchen, having a terrible fit. In really
bad cases, he would take his "special equipment" back with him.

The reason he ended up going big was because he couldn't keep track of all the
payments and legal paperwork by himself. The lawyer that ended up being a
partner was told to go help clean out a desk -- and found it stuffed with
checks totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Not sure of the veracity of that story, but it makes for a colorful anecdote!
And it reinforces the #1 quality of good startups: focus on delivering value
to the customer and the rest will work itself out.

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brk
My experience says that the teenage and college success stories are the
outliers. But, they make for good press, just like a plane crash is more
sensational than than 5000 individual daily car crashes (I just made the 5000
number up, but you get the point).

Too old would be 1 day before death, but you never know when that will be, so
you might as well get started.

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tptacek
Teenagers and college kids making a fortune is newsworthy. People making a
fortune during their prime earning years isn't. You don't have a real
question. You're too old to start a company when you're you're too old to work
a full-time day.

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joshu
I would not recommend starting a company to anyone over 135 years of age or
older.

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lsemel
Availability heuristic and confirmation bias. It's not big news when someone
who's 51 strikes it rich, but it's unusual when someone 21 does. So that what
gets reported and that's what comes to mind when you think of starting a
company. If you looked at the news you'd think everyone who's rich got there
by starting a hot startup in college (or got a big Wall Street bonus), but it
ain't necessarily so. Take a look at books like "Millionaire Next Door" for
some more balanced info on the kinds of companies people start and what age
they become wealthy.

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k0n2ad
Well, yes and no - I think that becoming a millionaire at 20 is much more
common now than it was 100 or even 50 years ago - especially since the advent
of the www.

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bigiain
I think it's much more about "when do you have too much responsibility to risk
crashing and burning?" rather than just "how old"? A 22 year old with a wife
and kid and mortgage and student debt is probably less able to focus and take
chances than a cashed up 50 year old without those responsibilities.

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CyberFonic
When you run out of imagination! Can't get motivated. Have no passion. For
some it's at 19 for others at 99!

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Nwallins
When did you stop beating your wife?

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protozen
Never too old

