What Age Are Most Entrepreneurs Who Launch a Startup
Does it matter?
A piece of research published in the Harvard Business Review in 2018 found that the average age at which a successful founder started a company was 45 years young.
Makes sense, right?
At 45, most people have 20–25 years industry experience, maybe some security, like a home, a sizeable network, and are likely to have disposable income. That said, none of the above are prerequisites, just a few potential benefits that can make it easier to get a new venture off the ground.
But is 45 accurate?
Let’s explore.
Age is just a number
According to the research collated in the book Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups, “ventures valued at $1 billion”-plus, created in the last 15 years, “the median age of the founders when starting their businesses was 34.”
By contrast, Wharton Business Schools’ research concluded that “successful entrepreneurial founders were 41.9 years of age”.
The magic Startup age(s)
Based on the three articles above, 45, 34, and 42 are the magic numbers, I mean ages, which averages out to 40 years of age.
So is 40 the ideal age?
I think we need to dig a bit deeper.
Peak age of Founders
Entrepreneurs are a different beast. Many fail. And fail often. A select few nail it early in their careers, whereas serial entrepreneurs are rarer.
The peak age of those who achieved high growth are familiar names:
- Steve Jobs (Apple) — 48 years old
- Bill Gates (Microsoft) — 39 years old
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon) — 45 years old
- Brin and Page (Google) — 36 years old
Simple arithmetic indicates that the average age, based on the aforementioned founders, is 41.5 years old, as shown below.
Chief Tweep-reneur
The infographic above excludes Elon Musk, so with Elon in mind let’s plug in a few numbers for perspective.
- Elon Musk (eBay) — 28 years old following 2002 sale of PayPal to eBay
- Elon Musk (SpaceX) — 41 years old when Falcon 9 landed in 2015
- Elon Musk (The Boring Company) — 50 years old when Las Vegas project was completed in 2021
- Elon Musk (Tesla) — 34 years old when Tesla Roadster launched in 2008
Ignoring effort and investment versus brand milestones, Elon’s average age is just shy of 40 years of age.
Disclaimer: Jack Dorsey is excluded, as is Elon’s tenure at Twitter until the dust settles on the blue-tick dilemma.
Age versus timing
There is no correlation between age and timing in Business.
- Age — Is simply the clock of life that we all experience
- Timing — Is the sweet spot when random events converge
So it’s fair to conclude that timing trumps age every time.
Disclaimer: Note that “timing trumps age” is not a slogan for Donald Trump’s current or future campaigns.
Ageless Foodies
Retail is a consistent generational catalyst. Long before the dotcom age, fast food was a retail wave that attracted visionaries for decades.
- KFC — In 1952 Col. Sanders franchised the KFC brand; he was 62 years old. In 1964, when he was 74, he had “more than 600 locations”.
- McDonald's — Ray Kroc was 59 when he acquired Richard and Maurice McDonald’s brand, the rest is history.
In the case of Sanders and Kroc, the average age is 65-plus years young,
Disclaimer: All “finger-lickin’ good” insights discussed above are unrelated to KFC, except the tagline above, cited from Wiktionary.
Final Thoughts
The research above indicates that the blended age is this:
- Three articles (cited above) = 40 years of age
- Peak age (Infographic) = 41.5 years of age
- Elon Musk = 40 years of age
- Ageless Foodies = 65 years of age
Let me plug these figures into my trusty calculator.
Click, click, click … carry the one … click — ENTER!
So, according to various data sources, the average age of an Entrepreneur today is 47 years of age.
From personal experience, having launched a new venture (at 46) with my wife last year, who was 41 at the time, I can testify that timing is much more important than age.
Key Takeaways
The best way to distill these findings are best described in the N.O.T.E. acronym below, so take NOTE of the following:
- Number — Age is just a number, period. Whether you’re 11, 17, 32, 40 or 75, it’s irrelevant when it comes to starting a business.
- Opportunity — Comes knocking at random moments, unplanned, sometimes uninvited, but it will arrive. When the stars do align one typical trait of an Entrepreneur is courage, those brave enough to seize opportunity, regardless of age.
- Timing — Timing will never be perfect. Sometimes life events get in the way when opportunity knocks, which happens, and the moment dissolves in random thought. That’s okay. What’s not okay is to ignore every moment, as there will be plenty. So trust your gut.
- Essential — Often, necessity is the fuel that drives an Entrepreneur to launch a new venture.
So is there a perfect age for Entrepreneurs to launch a Startup?
“KFC has over 18,800 outlets in 118 different countries and territories.” — Sujan Patel (Entrepreneur.com, 2015)
The answer is No— There is no right or wrong age to launch a new venture.
“Your journey toward entrepreneurship goes beyond power and wealth; it is driven by your authentic purpose, finding it and living it. — Jon Michail (Forbes.com, 2021)
