The Age of the Most Successful Startup Founders is...

4GenNow, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, cites impactful research to encourage the venture finance industry to fund intergenerational startups with co-founders from different generations.

The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder is 45

“Age indeed predicts success, and sharply, but in the opposite way that many observers and investors propose. The highest success rates in entrepreneurship come from founders in middle age and beyond,” concludes Pierre Azoulay and J.Daniel Kim of MIT, Benjamin Jones of Northwestern, and Javier Miranda, US Census Bureau in “Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship.”

The authors state: “Star innovators such as Bill Gates, who was 19 when he started Microsoft, Steve Jobs, 21 when he started Apple, and Mark Zuckerberg, 19 when he launched Facebook, have reinforced the longstanding impression that young people are the wellspring of entrepreneurship. Systemic data on firm founders, however, suggest that this impression is false.”

Successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young

Other findings from Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship:

·     "We find no evidence to suggest that founders in their 20s are especially likely to succeed

·     Rather, all evidence points to founders being especially successful when starting businesses in middle age or beyond, while young founders appear disadvantaged

·     Across the 2.7 million founders in the US between 2007 – 2014 who started companies that go on to hire at least one employee, the mean age for the entrepreneurs at founding is 41.9

·     The mean founder age for the 1 in 1,000 highest growth new ventures is 45; the most successful entrepreneurs in high technology sectors are of similar ages; so are the most successful founders in the entrepreneurial regions of the US

·     While the prevalence of the highest growth companies having middle-aged founders is due in part to the prevalence of entry by the middle-aged, we further that the “batting average” for creating successful firms is rising dramatically with age

·     Conditional on starting a firm, a 50-year-old-founder is 1.8 times more likely to achieve upper-tail growth than a 30-year-old founder.

·     Founders in their early 20s have the lowest likelihood of successful exit or creating a 1 in 1,000 top growth firm"

So, what if more Angel investors and Venture Capitalists funded intergenerational startups with at least two co-founders from different generations? More Startups!

Startup Firms on the Rise But Still Below Pre-Recession Levels

In an excellent article, "Startup Firms on the Rise But Still Below Pre-Recession Levels," Kristin McCue, Principal Economist in the Census Bureau's Center for Economic Studies and James Lawrence, Survey Statistician in the Economy-Wide Statistics Division state:

" The number of business startups has risen in recent years, but remains well below pre-Great Recession levels. In 2015, 414,000 startup firms created 2.5 million new jobs, according to data from the Census Bureau’s Business Dynamics Statistics (BDS). The average in the 2002-2006 period was 524,000 startup firms and 3.3 million new jobs per year. The peak was in 2006, when 558,000 startup firms created 3.4 million jobs."

4GenNow believes that more intergenerational startups being funded will result in more startups being created, and more startups that are positioned for success.

OneClick.chat Cofounders Dillon Myers (Millennial, left) and Alan Gibson (Boomer, right) pictured above

INTERGENERATIONAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP: New Model to Create and Fund Startups

MERGING YOUTH & EXPERIENCE

• 4GenNow believes the best way to create not only more startups, but startups that are better positioned for success, is to connect, match and fund co-founders from different generations.
• When we think about diversity, we typically think of race and gender.
• Generational diversity is an overlooked component of diversity that all startups can use to become more successful.
• Intergenerational startups with co-founders from different generations bring diverse ideas, experiences and skills to become more successful and more attractive to angel investors.
• 4GenNow connects and matches a solo founder from one generation with a co-founder from a different generation through its proprietary online matching system and in-person events.

For more information: www.4GenNow.com; a 501c3 non-profit organization