It's never too late to become an entrepreneur (dailybreeze.com)
This will become a big trend in next 5-10 years amongst "Baby Boomers"<p>The growing interest in entrepreneurship and age is reflected in a study by the Kauffman Foundation that found that more people ages 55 to 64 are creating their own businesses than those ages 20 to 34.<p>As a percentage of total entrepreneurs, the 55 to 64 age group has grown the most. For example, in 1996 14.3 percent of all entrepreneurs were ages 55 to 64; in 2011, that grew to 20.9 percent. The percentage of entrepreneurs that declined most sharply were those in the 20 to 34 age range.
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 50.3 ms ] thread"Seeing what everybody does, thinking what nobody does."
i would change it a little.
Seeing what everybody does, thinking what few do, executing like noone else
"Thus, the task is, not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."
Didn't Steve Blank peg it at 99.7%?
It's quite possible to create a business that does several tens of millions in turnover and employs 100 people or more.
It happens all the time and those businesses are started by a wide variety of people when it comes to age, gender, ethic background, location and so on. These companies are the economic backbone of many civilizations.
Corporations are complex surfaces along many axis changing dramatically during their lifespan, there isn't such a thing as a clear dividing line between one group and another, only vague clustering and shifts.
At one point during its lifespan Kodak was a small business, then a start-up, then a Fortune 500 company, then ripe for disruption and now they're dead. Calling a company a start-up is like calling a person a baby throughout a large portion of their life. A start-up is a phase, not an endpoint.
Some people don't start out to do a start-up according to the SB or PG definition but find out after the fact that that was just what they ended up with.
Some people start out to do just that and end up with a small business. It isn't all black and white, there are lots of shades of grey and there is a lot less control by the participants than you might be led to believe.
It is also my reason why I wanted to start at an early age. I still don't have a family to feed. No housing, electricity, water bills to pay because I can still live with my parents. And I still have the energy because I'm still young. With it, I can focus solely on my aim which is building a startup/company.
"Many older adults are having difficulty becoming re-employed. On average, it takes them about one year and often that new job is at a lower salary with fewer benefits, and part time rather than full time. With an uncertain economy, job shortages in many areas, skill mismatches, ageism and companies doing more with less -- the challenges are real."
In my understanding, she is somewhat encouraging those older adults to have a startup/small business/company. But she's encouraging those older adults that are in need of money (like to pay the bills) thus don't have that savings to start one.
Likewise, any advantages of age are going to come with the individual and not the year said individual was born.
Full Disclosure: I'm neither old (depending on your definition I suppose) nor an entrepreneur (again...).
1. Seed capital seems largely useless, my lifestyle is very modest but the realities of childcare and mortgage mean my living expenses are higher than for your typical 20-something. The sums of money available at an early stage wouldn't last long enough to build an MVP, demonstrate traction, then find an angel. I'd have to go back to freelancing, only then I'd have an investor on my back. Bootstrapping seems like the only real option.
2. Having worked for 14 years as a developer then manager, I have a pretty good professional network. I've been pleasantly surprised by how easy its been to get work that fits round my startup work. I'm booked till Apr 2013 and turning gigs down at the moment.
3. Having kids is a huge time commitment. I simply cannot work at the office for 80 hours or more like some startup people do. However, I share an incubator space with some people like that and without wanting to sound in any way arrogant, I've realised that (a) my time constraints force me to focus really hard, I put in 50 really focused hours a week whereas they sometimes kick back and chat for a while because their energy is low, and (b) I have a lot more experience than them so I'm able to move faster than them on things like how to prep for a meeting with a potential partner or how to architect a system for the future. I think of it like this: if I can't leverage my ten years extra experience on these people to match their output in less time, then I deserve to go bust.
3. Energy: I'm doing what I love, I have all the energy I need.
Basically, you have to be a different kind of entrepreneur, some wouldn't call my product a "startup" because it isn't (yet) a shoot for the moon type venture, but I'm still 'starting something up' and it's still an exciting challenge :)
That's a gem. Experience is worth about 40 hours per week or so ;)
So if you are in 40s and worked for big corporations as senior engineer / manager you should have about 100K in savings (assuming you save save about 5K a year of your 150K salary).
Regarding kids, yes that is a big responsibility but also something you don't get tired doing.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4838215