When do you plan to start a business? Have you already started a business? What’s the best age to become an entrepreneur? If you think you are too old to start a business, think again. Age should not only be a factor when you are thinking of starting a business.
Other responsibilities like family could be a reason you may want to stick to your job because the risk of starting something new without a reliable source of income will be higher.
Whatever the case maybe, if you want to go for it, don’t just think you are too old to to be an entrepreneur. You can achieve your dreams if you set your mind to it and take that calculated step today. In as much as younger entrepreneurs can take a lot more risk, older entrepreneurs start with greater maturity and lots of experience.
In a research by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders was 39 when they started their companies. Twice as many were older than 50 as were younger than twenty-five. Another research also finds that people are at their most innovative and productive around their late 30s.
Age is only one factor among many to predict the success of entrepreneurs, and anybody at any age can start something new and make impact if they put their minds to it.
These are 19 of the most successful technology founders who started great companies when they were over 35. Most of these founders still play key roles in their companies.
1. Mark Pincus was 41 when he started Zynga.
2. Reid Hoffman was 36 when he founded Linkedin.
3. Mitchell Baker founded Mozilla at 35+
4. Katie Rae, founded TechStars Boston at 42
5. Reed Hastings started Netflix DVD rental when he was 37
6. Jimmy Wales turned 35 the year he founded Wikipedia and 38 the year he founded Wikia.
7. Marc Benioff was 35 when he started Salesforce.
8. Linda Avey cofounded 23andMe at 46
9. Rashmi Sinha, founded Slideshare at 37
10. Om Malik started GigaOm (the company in 2006) at the age of 39.
11. Robert Noyce started Intel at 41 with a 39 year old Gordon Moore.
12. Robin Chase founded Zipcar when he was 42.
13. Michael Arrington started TechCrunch when he was 35.
14. Tim Westergren started Pandora when he was 35.
15. Yaron Samid started @BillGuard when he was 36.
16. Craig Newmark started craigslist when he was 42.
17. Evan Williams of Twitter (age 35 in 2007)
18. Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post (age 54 in 2005)
19. Irwin Jacobs was 52 and Andrew Viterbi was 50 when they founded Qualcomm.
This post was inspired by this Quora question: What do people in Silicon Valley plan to do once they hit 35 and are officially over the hill?”
1 comment
What about KFC?
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