Afraid Success Has Passed You By? To Be Remarkably Successful, Science Says Time (and Mastery) Is Truly on Your Side

A VC friend told me he estimates the average age of the entrepreneurs who pitch him is somewhere around 25, if only because most of the most valuable tech companies were launched by young entrepreneurs. Mark Zuckerberg was 19 when he started Facebook. Bill Gates was 21 when he started Microsoft. Co-founder Paul Allen was a decrepit 23. Steve Jobs was 21 when he co-founded Apple. Co-founder Steve Wozniak was 26; "forgotten" co-founder Ronald Wayne was -- gasp -- in his 40s. Amazon's Jeff Bezos and Nvidia's Jensen Huang were 30.

Yet he was hardly an exception. A study conducted by the Census Bureau and two MIT professors found the most successful entrepreneurs tend to be middle-aged, even in the technology sector.

For many, the father of the Taiwanese semiconductor industry, Morris Chang, is the exception that proves the rule: Chang was 55 when he founded the now $700 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

After compiling a list of 2.7 million company founders who hired at least one employee between 2007 and 2014, researchers found the average age of those who founded the most successful tech companies was 45 years. In general terms, a 50-year-old entrepreneur was almost twice as likely to start an extremely successful company as a 30-year-old. A 60-year-old startup founder was three times more likely to launch a successful startup than a 30-year-old startup founder and nearly twice as likely to have launched a startup that ranks in the top 0.1 percent (in terms of revenue) of all companies.

And then there's this: A study published by the National Bureau of Academic Research found the average age of entrepreneurs who start a company and go on to hire at least one employee is 42.

Makes sense. Ideas are great, but execution is everything -- and it's much harder to execute well when you have limited experience. That's especially true when leadership experience is a factor. I can have a groundbreaking idea, but if I don't have the skills needed to turn a collection of individuals into a team, I'll probably fail.

But there's a deeper reason. People who succeed at a young age tend to make conceptual breakthroughs. Like Bill Gates and his "computer on every desk and in every home." Like Bezos and his "everything store." Like Lin-Manuel Miranda, who was 28 when he started developing Hamilton, arguably the first successful hip-hop musical.

While Gates and Bezos didn't have the skills to run multibillion-dollar companies, they did have breakthrough ideas and then they developed the necessary skills. Miranda didn't have the skills to write Hamilton, but he developed those skills; for example, he says it took a year to write "My Shot."

Contrast that with people who start companies later in life. Most build on skills, knowledge, and experience they've gained.

Chang worked his way up the corporate ladder to become a vice president at Texas Instruments. Ray Kroc held a number of sales jobs before purchasing McDonald's when he was 52. Sam Walton's experience owning Ben Franklin stores led to developing the skills to run a multilocation retail operation -- and to the conceptual breakthrough of launching Wal-Mart stores in small towns, not large cities.

Think of them as examples of what David Galenson in Old Masters and Young Geniuses calls masters--people who may not have been very good in their chosen field, or in any field, early in life, but worked to develop mastery. They peak later in life because they've developed the skills necessary to execute: to turn a string of burger joints into a multinational conglomerate. To turn inefficient and disjointed retail operations into a logistics juggernaut.

While others surely had similar ideas, Gates, Bezos, et al. also managed to execute, and survivor bias -- our tendency to take lessons from people who survived and ignore those who failed -- helps us word-associate our way to reflexively thinking "young" when we hear "successful entrepreneur." But research shows that's rarely the case. Sure, if you truly make a conceptual breakthrough, you may be able to be wildly successful at a young age. Most of the time, though, older entrepreneurs have a decided advantage.

Even in tech fields, long assumed to be the province of youth. (There's a huge difference between adoption/consumption and creation.) So, if you're in your 40s, as Sam Walton was, and you want to start a business, do it. If you're in your 50s, as Ray Kroc was, and you want to start a business, do it. If you're in your 60s, as Colonel Sanders was, and you want to franchise your business, do it.

While ideas matter, especially genuinely breakthrough ideas, execution almost always matters more.

Research shows age isn't a competitive disadvantage; instead, your experience, skills, connections, and expertise are what will make you successful.

As long as you put those attributes -- attributes you've earned -- to work for you.

I needed this article today!

I’m over 50 and have been plugging away at various skill areas and interests all my life—some of them rather unconnected. Seemingly not getting very far, although I have a great family, a good job and a side business.

Sometimes I can’t help feeling that I’ve missed the boat when I see these young go-getters making it big, and me still barely out of the starting gate with my own ideas that I’ve nurtured for 30+ years. But on the other hand I’ve picked up so many skill sets and have learned so much that is valuable in starting and growing a business.

This information is all very encouraging, and gives me hope.

Tucker Carlson: EP 75:
Mike Benz Interview
Twitter / X ^ | 2/16/24 | Tucker Carlson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1758529993280205039

Excerpt, Google Voice Typed:
Google is a great example of this. Google began as a DARPA grant by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were Stanford PHD’s and they They got their funding as part of a joint CIA NSA program to chart how “birds of a feather flock together online” through search engine aggregation.

And then one year later they launched Google and then became a military contractor quickly. Thereafter they got Google Maps by purchasing a CIA satellite software essentially and the ability to track to use free speech on the Internet as a way to circumvent state control over media over in places like Central Asia or or all around the world was seen as a way to Be able to do what used to be done out of CIA station houses or out of embassies or consulates in a way that that was totally turbocharged.

And all of the Internet free speech technology was initially created by our national security state. VPN’s, virtual private networks to hide your IP address, tour the dark web to be able to buy and trail sell goods anonymously, end to end, encrypted chats. All of these things were created initially as DARPA projects or as joint CIA NSA projects to be able to help Intelligence backed groups to overthrow governments that were causing a problem to the Clinton administration or the Bush administration or the Obama administration.

And this plan worked magically from about 1991 until about 2014 when there began to be an about face on Internet freedom And its utility.

Now, the high watermark of the sort of Internet free speech moment, was the Arab Spring in 2011, 2012, when you had this one by one, all of the adversary governments of the Obama administration, Egypt, Tunisia, all began to be toppled in Facebook revolutions and Twitter revolutions.

And you had the State Department working very closely with the social media companies To be able to keep social media online during those periods. There’s a famous phone call from Google’s Jared Cohen to Twitter to not do their scheduled maintenance. So that this so that the preferred opposition group in Iran would be able to use Twitter to win that election.

So it was an instant, free speech was an instrument of statecraft From the national security state to begin with. All of that architecture, all the NGO’s, the relationships between the tech companies and the national security state had been long established for freedom.

In 2014, after the coup in Ukraine, there was an unexpected counter coup where Crimea and the Donbass broke away.

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