Monday 13 July 2009 1:03:43 pm

Entrepreneurs don’t having to be young bucks! Let’s get over the Age Barrier:-

“A man who, beyond the age of thirty, finds himself on a bus, can count himself as a failure.”

Did the heroine of Eighties Yuppies, Margaret Thatcher actually ever say this? The debate will rage on, but regardless as to whether she ever uttered the words the point is not lost – the clock is ticking and you have to push your career early and hard or you can deem yourself a failure.

Hmm, I agree with a lot of Maggie’s ideas but, if she said this, then I’m not so sure she was right. Many so-called experts will tell you that age IS a barrier. Entrepreneurial start-ups are the domain of the youthful (by youthful let’s be generous and say sub-thirty-five), but this is questionable.

One of the most successful UK businessmen told me a few weeks ago that it was only because of his advancing years that he pulled his finger out. The man who started up pretty much solo in the mid-eighties and who turned his operation into one of the biggest FTSE 100 companies, said to me: “In fact, the so-called male menopause was the catalyst for me to make the move. I got to forty, looked at what I had achieved so far in my career and realized there was more to life.”

Age a barrier or a potential catalyst for an entrepreneur? Not as clear-cut as you may think.

Steve Sedgwick

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Wednesday 15 July 2009 9:34:22 am

Steve, Victoria, obviously these reflections are personal (like most people's on such a subject I guess), but I don't think anyone needs to limit themselves in their thinking about age. Nowadays we settle down later, in terms of marriage/kids etc. It's also largely about whether you have set up your life in a way that you can't get off the corporate treadmill or not. Many see entrepreneurship as ok when younger, too risky when older (because they have big mortgage, kids, "golden handcuffs" etc.) I can also see the argument for it working the other way around.

If you've spent your early years getting good experience and training in the corporate world, you learn to do things right - in my view you are much less likely to make bad mistakes in your entrepreneurship, and you always have your training to fall back on if it all goes wrong - no-one can take that away from you. However, not many young entrepreneurs, who have spent 5-10 years being an entrepreneur, succeed in entering the corporate world later. It shouldn't be that way, but it often is.

So I think really you can argue it from any angle - you can be an entrepreneur at any age. It's about your mindset, not your wrinkles or lack of them.

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Wednesday 15 July 2009 1:30:59 pm

That's a different question, but your comment's certainly true. Mind you, falling in love is often dangerous, and never more so than with your own idea - you can be blind to its faults...

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Thursday 23 July 2009 2:42:07 pm

I am writing this from a perspective of a 23 year old. In my view, I don’t think age is a barrier. In some cases, it is a great asset. For one as Rob as pointed out, a young person is willing to take on greater risks as he has less to lose. However, I think one of the main assets is one which you may see as a weakness. Youth itself. Since, I have been involved in developing concepts and ideas, I have not been restricted to “the way things are done around here”. I haven’t been restricted by a corporate culture where in some cases, there is a belief that there is only one way to sell a product or conduct business activity. In fact, a young entrepreneur (it is also true for all entrepreneurs of all ages) is able to develop a new culture which fits with the concept and the business. A prime example of this is Richard Branson who started when he was 16 years old.

I do feel that being young is a barrier when trying to obtain finance as an investor/ bank wants to invest in a person who has experienced and been there before. However, this can be overcome for example, when trying to obtain finance it is about being persistent and obtaining a belief in you and that the concept is truly beneficial to the economy. This is why we developed 14XC to enable entrepreneurs to obtain that lifeline “finance” to develop their business.

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Sunday 26 July 2009 10:30:22 pm

I think it’s a numbers game. The process has an amazingly low probability of success, when you are older you realise that and hedge your bets. But still, at any one time there are many more young guns banging their heads than older sore heads and so they do find the opportunities. The thing that amazes me is how often someone like a Steve Jobs, or Richard Branson is pulled out of the hat as an example of some secret formulae for success. I mean is it really 2 or 3 chance in about 100 million ! What about all the failures? And then when you read the fine print ( and their bios ) you see even in those rare rare cases their success stories have begun with blind luck – their genius though has been their ability to run with it.

I don’t think there is a secret formula for planned entrepreneurial success young or old, just a risk assessment and if you were old enough to understand the risks you would never start. Be stubborn and stick with it too long and you will be unemployable (which is a great comment from Stellios BTW) but don’t keep at it and you will never have a chance for an independent life vision. Woody Allens line ‘half of success is just showing up’ is the best way I can describe it. If your not trying there is zero percent chance of success but what are you willing to risk for that very slim chance..

Also the risk profile changes as you invest more into your previous ideas. I know I have not gone done other paths because I have too much sunk investment in an existing idea – an entrepreneur is usually a power of 1 at least until they are making money – but unencumbered by an existing project ( ie if I was younger ) I may have taken the other idea to success (or not). So again, the younger generation have access to fresher prospective ideas that bubble up due to technology changes or political shifts than older entrepreneurs who are still developing the ideas they had a couple years ago.

The ideal solution is an old head on a young body – but of course utopia doesn’t exist.

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