Founders of Successful Tech Companies Are Mostly Middle-Aged (nytimes.com) 59
After analyzing high-growth companies in the United States, a team of economists discovered that most superstar entrepreneurs are middle-aged. Their study is being published in the journal American Economic Review: Insights. The New York Times reports: The researchers looked at start-ups established between 2007 and 2014 and analyzed the top 0.1 percent -- defined as those with the fastest growth in employment and sales. The average age of those companies' founders was 45. There are, of course, famous counterexamples. Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he co-founded Facebook. Bill Gates was 19 when he founded Microsoft with Paul Allen. Steve Jobs was 21 when he founded Apple with Steve Wozniak. The origin stories of those companies and a handful of others helped to shape a myth that tech, and American innovation overall, is fueled by wunderkinds. But fresh-faced founders are the exception, not the rule, according to the study.
The new study was able to zero in on high-flying start-ups by bringing together anonymized data collected by different agencies within the federal government. The government matched sales and employment data for start-ups collected by the Census Bureau with information on the founders extracted from Internal Revenue Service filings. After stripping identifying information, the government provided the researchers with a data set including 2.7 million business founders. The researchers calculated that the founders' average age was 42. And for the founders of the 0.1 percent fastest-growing firms, the average age was 45. Firms that were successful enough to have an initial public offering or be acquired by a larger company showed the same pattern: Their founders were generally middle-aged.
The new study was able to zero in on high-flying start-ups by bringing together anonymized data collected by different agencies within the federal government. The government matched sales and employment data for start-ups collected by the Census Bureau with information on the founders extracted from Internal Revenue Service filings. After stripping identifying information, the government provided the researchers with a data set including 2.7 million business founders. The researchers calculated that the founders' average age was 42. And for the founders of the 0.1 percent fastest-growing firms, the average age was 45. Firms that were successful enough to have an initial public offering or be acquired by a larger company showed the same pattern: Their founders were generally middle-aged.
That's where the money is (Score:1)
Those who inherited at a young age have no incentive, at most they'll do real-estate because it needs no brains.
Re: That's where the money is (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Those who inherited at a young age have no incentive, at most they'll do real-estate because it needs no brains.
I'm thinking that having access to some capital is very important. If you are middle aged, and have a good, proven track record with managing projects, investors will be more willing to trust their capital in you.
If you are young and have a brilliant idea, but no experience . . . investors will be wary.
Re: (Score:3)
In many cases, if a VC has doubts, their capital will come fenced about with conditions. But even so my accountant has plenty of stories about founders
business experience (Score:5, Insightful)
People in middle age have experience in how a business works, the various front and back office functions, at least a basic knowledge of cash flows and overheads.
That makes a massive difference between running out of cash in the first three years and surviving that early period, during which most new companies go under.
It's not a guarantee though, anybody can have their business fail. Even the top entrepreneurs tend to be known for succeeding despite initial failures.
Re: (Score:2)
That makes a massive difference between running out of cash in the first three years and surviving that early period, during which most new companies go under.
I have this creepy suspicion, but no evidence, that this is the intent all along.
1) Get funding for your startup through shenanigans.
2) Convert the startup's capital into your private wealth.
3) Startup goes bust.
4) Either retire or rinse and repeat.
Re: business experience (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Well dishonest is as dishonest does but on the other hand VCs should know better than that. These are not retail investors we are talking about here. If you are in the VC games you'd better recognize the difference between an idea and business plan when your hear a pitch. You also better have some sense of if the person given you the pitch is reasonably likely to be capable of executing on that plan.
Nothing wrong with simple buying an idea either. If you can get who ever has it to sell it you. Many most
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One should maybe note that luck plays a HUGE role (Score:5, Insightful)
When you look at the success story of Facebook, MS and Apple, you'll notice that luck played a HUGE role in all of them. It was mostly a mix of right time-right place along with pure luck that some things happened to fall into place. In other words, nothing you could repeat by following their example.
This is also why reading books from "successful" people is mostly useless. Without the insane amount of luck they had, they would not have succeeded but faltered. In other words, buy a lottery ticket instead of their book. Your chances of success are higher.
Re:One should maybe note that luck plays a HUGE ro (Score:5, Insightful)
It was mostly a mix of right time-right place along with pure luck that some things happened to fall into place.
True... but if you find yourself in the right place at the right time with luck on your side, you will still have to act. And then keep it up. Think big but also manage growth. The latter is where a lot of startups fail: they have a good idea, ready buyers and willing investors, but they fail to scale up and manage a growing firm. FaceBook, MS and Apple would not be where they are today without their respective founders at the helm, luck or no.
I've had a few good ideas, I might even have been in the right place at the right time. But I didn't act on it; I'm just not that kind of person. As Randall Munroe would have it: "The problem isn't your dreams, it's that it's you having them"
This is also why reading books from "successful" people is mostly useless.
Absolutely. And even more useless is reading about their personal habits
Re:One should maybe note that luck plays a HUGE ro (Score:5, Insightful)
A couple of my labmates suggested seeing a movie that night. We didn't have a copy of the day's newspaper, so one of them called the theater to get the playtimes for the movie. (Yes millennials, this is how we used to figure out where and when a movie was playing.) Then I thought, wait a minute, we're in Boston, technological hub of the east coast. Maybe the theater has a website? I checked a list of local businesses that someone was maintaining as a webpage, but didn't see any theaters on it. I did some searching on this new portal called Yahoo, but none of the local theaters had added themselves to it yet.
Then the thought crossed my mind. Someone should register movies.com and set up a website on it. You could type in your zip code and it would show you the playtimes of movies at all your local theaters. The theaters could upload their play schedules to the site, and visitors to the site could easily search for where and when the movie they wanted to see was playing. No more having to flip through newspapers to find playtimes. No more having to look up the theater's number in the phone book and call them, then wait several minutes listening to a pre-recorded message until the movie you were interested in came up.
Then for a fleeting moment, another thought crossed my mind. *I* could register movies.com and set up that site. I mulled it over for a few seconds, considering the resources I'd need to do it and the time investment. Then I thought, no, that would be wrong. I'm a RA investigating underwater acoustic signal propagation. I was too busy with my research. Besides, it wasn't even my field. Someone in the movie or theater business should be the one to set up such a site. And domains cost like $100 to register; I was having a hard enough time paying for lunch. Anyway, my labmates were waiting for me so we could head for the theater, and I didn't want to make us late. Just like that, the moment was gone.
Years later when I was talking to my friend, it turned out he had gotten the same idea while in med school, about a year after I had the idea, just before the dot.com bubble. He spent his then-life savings grabbing generic name domains (things like movies.com, taxreturn.com, vacation.com, etc), set them up as portal websites, and sold space on them to advertisers. When he started he tried coding the websites himself. He quickly realized he was incompetent at it, so he paid someone to do the coding for him. The Internet was new and lots of these generic domain names were still available. His first few domains were successful enough he used the money he made from them to search for and register more generic domains. And 10 years later he owned a company worth $40 million which was fast on its way to becoming worth $100 million.
He risked his money and acted on the crazy idea. I thought up excuses not to do it (money, time away from my studies, appropriateness), and did not. (BTW, he has a solid work ethic and is very self driven - he completed med school and his residency at the same time, and did all this in the little free time he had.)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a race to the bottom in disguise. By setting up a society that rewards people who do this crazy no-time-for-anything-but-getting-ahead nonsense, you price regular people out of success.
Re: (Score:2)
This is baloney. That logic holds no one responsible for their own success or failures and is why all of the poor folks stay poor. Its not luck, it never had been. Folks just blame luck when they fail to understand all of the elements that went into play.
Good Luck = People trying hard and not giving up when they fail.
Bad Luck = People barely trying or quickly giving up when they fail.
This is literally all there is to it!
"This is also why reading books from "successful" people is mostly useless. Without t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's part of the "siren call" of socialism. No one is responsible for success or failure (remember "you didn't build that" [youtube.com]), so it must be pure luck. Nothing else. Of course, that is - as you correctly state - BS.
But it is a seductive song for a generation that seems to lack the "give up most of the creature comforts and work crazy hard for a decade to become successful" drive. They want it handed to them, or at least shared amongst everyone. When no one is successful on their own, then no one can be a
Re: (Score:2)
Luck is real but by itself luck is not enough. Luck alone will not make someone unprepared or unwilling to take risks into a success.
Re: (Score:3)
You need luck, a viable business plan, reasonable discipline, and no fear of failure. It helps tremulously to have relationships, and at least a general understanding and ability to research regulatory requirements.
For my company, my partners and I were 30, 35, 44, and 45 when we started. It brought together all those elements, and without the balance we never would have succeeded. The most important things for us were enough start-up money (about $200k combined), and the ability to recruit people from our
Re: (Score:2)
Only after the market has developed significantly does luck play a bigger role. Once all the low-hanging fruit has been picked, and there are
Re: (Score:2)
This is also why reading books from "successful" people is mostly useless.
The majority of what "successful" people do is the exact same as what unsuccessful people do. There are exceptions but most of the difference is a certain intuition that usually they can't even explain themselves and generally can't be taught.
Re: (Score:2)
It's hardly intuition. Intuition is built upon preparation and experience. The successful ones are persistent and prepared when opportunity arises, and they don't often wait for it to come knocking, they go door to door looking for it.
I can certainly explain it. Delayed gratification (Score:2)
I've been very unsuccessful for years and I've been very successful. I've done things that turned out very badly and things that turned out very well. I've noticed a pattern.
All of my worst mistakes were doing what I felt like doing *right now*, short term thinking. From skipping class to eating junk - it's fun for a few minutes, maybe an hour. Then I pay the price the rest of my life. Having sex with someone I shouldn't - fun for an hour, paid the cost for years.
The decisions that worked out very well h
Re: (Score:2)
"you'll notice that luck played a HUGE role in all of them"
While sometimes true, you often make your own luck through preparation. Opportunities will present themselves to you throughout your career, but you've gotta be ready. Often, they'll come from people who take notice of that preparation. It's the losers who don't prepare that will look over at the winners and blame it on luck.
But, maybe you're defining success differently. Mine is being able to retire comfortably, which I just did a few months b
Butchering the German language (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The plural of 'Wunderkind' is 'Wunderkinder'.
Nein, the plural of 'Wunderkind' ist die Pest.
My experience in Germany since 1986 is that Germans have an Engelsgeduld; "The patience of angels"; with their language. If you try to learn it, they will help you.
I did a presentation for the German Army in Koblenz. Since it was boring IT stuff, I hammed it up a bit. In German. Afterwards a colonel ("Oberst") came up to me and said that if I served in his unit I would never have to prove my courage and valor; "Mut und Tapferkeit". Because I had managed to
Re: (Score:2)
Most succesful people are somewhat... (Score:4, Informative)
... criminal. If one looks at microsoft, there was a lot of theft/ripping off and monopolistic tactics.
For those of us who remember owning our PC games back in the 90's, before high speed internet penetration Gabe newell launched steam off a stolen copy of half-life 2 by infecting it with steam malware. The fact that drm (corporate malware) is now everywhere and games have literally been taken hostage on the other side of the net proves that most business is pretty scummy and getting rich off stupid irrational behaviors or technology that allows new forms of exploitation (aka mmo's are just rpg's bicycle chaind to foreign computers thereby allowing companies to prevent software ownership/monopolize the software).
Re:Most succesful people are somewhat... (Score:5, Informative)
aka mmo's are just rpg's bicycle chaind to foreign computers
Huh what? No, they really aren't.
The truth about DRM is that it mostly works, these days. No more typing in word 3 from line 5 on page 7 of the manual, no more staring a ta bunch of dots through a red lens to read an unlock code, no more media that refuse to be read because some physical DRM doesn't sit well with your particular drive. There's no more DRM rootkits, and the software is pretty unintrusive. Most Steam games work fine when offline, and it's convenient to shop for games and have them download and update automatically.
Sure, there are cases where DRM fails to work, where a central server is pulled leaving subscribers without access to their library, but such cases are rare. And in many cases it concerns older titles that the vast majority of people do not really care about anymore. While DRM is far more ubiquitous than it ever was, far fever people are actually affected by it to the point where they even notice. I'd rather do without, but I am not so hung up about it anymore as I used to be.
Re: (Score:2)
Huh what? No, they really aren't..
Yes they are, since they were the trial balloon in the attack on game ownership over the last 20 years. You're really clueless.
Diablo 2 we owned it --> diablo 3 blizz controls it and can shut the program down because it wasn't given to you.
Any program can be divided into client and server over a network. The term MMO is just a corporate PR label for a computer program - a set of instructions, where part of the instructions the company didn't give you.
It was all part of the plan to undermine game owners
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
MMO's were divided into client and server because it made sense to do so.
You don't seem to understand your word salad means nothing, role playing games on the PC during development were coded to be server locked as soon as the internet became fast enough. Notice how ultima rpg's on the PC disappeared after UO. That is why we got guild wars 1 with a login screen, it was all about taking away the software from the user.
The whole "made sense to do so" is nosense, because private servers exist for both world of warcraft and UO, proving once and for all it was part of a scam to ge
Re: (Score:1)
MMO's were divided into client and server because it made sense to do so.
Yeah, it does make sense to do so in the case of MMO, but not every game needs or wants a multi-player feature at all. However, a lot of games do benefit from some form of multi-player. (and for other games it really adds nothing, maybe even detracts) MMOs are designed to have multiple players all interacting. Connecting single player games to a server as form of DRM doesn't benefit the player.
role playing games on the PC during development were coded to be server locked as soon as the internet became fast enough. Notice how ultima rpg's on the PC disappeared after UO. That is why we got guild wars 1 with a login screen, it was all about taking away the software from the user.
The whole "made sense to do so" is nosense, because private servers exist for both world of warcraft and UO, proving once and for all it was part of a scam to get rid of RPG game software that was within the gamers control.
So, yes private servers exist, but you still have client server architecture for a reason. There are certain a
At time of founding? (Score:2)
The study mentions "age of founding" and the summary says "founder's average age". Which is which?
Is 45 the average age of founders when they founded the company, or the average age of the founders right now?
Woo Hoo! There's still time! (Score:2)
Now, all I need is a good idea!
Re: (Score:2)
Why are so many young tech companies famous? (Score:2)
Bill Hewlett and David Packard were in their mid-20's when they founded HP.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fluke still makes test equipment; HP is a brand applied to Compaq computers and printers.
Being public really doesn't matter; Cargill is a private company, but if it was public, its revenue would put it into the Fortune 20 - bigger than all but 19 other listed companies.
HP is just a brand name now, a hollow shell of what it originally was. In the mean time, Fluke is still making test equipment, and still dominating that market.
Re: (Score:2)
It's lost the HP name, but the company [keysight.com] still makes test equipment.
Re: (Score:2)
And your point is?
By any stretch, HP was successful. Being bought up, by anyone, isn't bad.
Re: (Score:1)
Thats decades of spending from cult like young people thinking "big" new tech is just for them.
Carefully selected pasts in engineering, university, their first "product".
Cant code? The amazing friend who could code.
Parents ensuring a city/gov/mil granted access to new ideas.
The consumers grow with the brand and the leader is still just like them
A global success story to sell of people who can't code much, made one product
Re: (Score:2)
Posting after a long night of drinking is bad.
Re: (Score:1)
The prep school guy? Go full Harvard?
you can mod me down, but you can't stop me (Score:1)
... Because I will just get more karma.
The preceding post is even on topic because of course only middle aged people can afford to start up companies. They have the money. How do we fix that? I see many of you don't want to.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
One of the dumbest things you've ever posted. You clearly have zero experience in business.
It takes that long to FAIL enough to be successful (Score:2)
Think about it: the only impetus for change is failure. If things are going great, you don't mess with it. Start-ups, by definition, are change agents. You have to build up enough examples of what won't work before you can figure out what will. See: the invention of the incandescent light bulb.
Stupid analysis (Score:2)
Facebook: Exception
Apple: Exception
Amazon: Exception (Bezos was 30)
Netflix: Both founders in late 30s, so below the average here though not far below it.
Google: Exception
Microsoft: Exception
Oracle: Ellison was 33
Intel: Moore was 39, Noyce was 41
Looks to me like the founders of the most successful US tech companies are rather younger than this article would say.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
How much of that was US mil/gov "support"?
They all had govt. contracts, but none of those were built on it. They were all very successful before that.
Re: (Score:1)
Until a whistleblower shows the lack on working encryption?
A gov/mil origin story? Small brads that enjoy working with the US gov/mil? That grow into big trusted brands?
Later having to help the mil/gov? Its what big brands have to do?
Junk, weak encryption just happens and stays hidden from everyone?
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing you said negates my point. Those companies all made it long before govt. contracting.
Re: (Score:1)
They where happy to help the NSA.
All very comfortable working with the US gov/mil...
Was that the very first time they helped the US gov/mil since the 1980's? 1990's? In the early 2000's?
That helping the US gov was all very legal.
Was that for past gov support/funding? Pure patriotism much later?