Ventress Enterprises

The New “Age” Entrepreneur

The following is a bit of information about todays entrepreneur and the shifting characteristics of those entrepreneurs, specifically, age.

One of the most important things to take from this information is that it’s never too late to take that next step into, not only self employment but also doing something you enjoy and excel at.

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Forget the twentysomethings who dominated the dotcom era: Today, most company founders are between the ages of 55 and 64.

Ashook Sood started his first company at age 54. Seven years later, about the same time many of his former colleagues at Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, and Tyco were preparing to retire, he founded his second startup.

Sood could retire comfortably today and spend more time with his family, but that’s not in the cards.

“Things are falling into place. We’re just getting started,” said Sood, CEO of Magnolia Solar Inc., a company that develops nanostructured thin-film solar cells. The company in March moved to Albany, New York, from Woburn, Massachusetts.

Sood, 62, is among the growing number of individuals who are forming early-stage businesses later in life.

The 20-to-34 age bracket—once the hottest group for founding early-stage technology companies—has the lowest startup rate, according to a recent study by the Kauffman Foundation, a private organization that tracks entrepreneurship.

The number of people ages 55 to 64 who started businesses increased 36 percent in 2008. In all, more than 80 percent of all startups were by people over 40 years of age.

There are a number of reasons for the rise in middle-aged entrepreneurship.

• Recessions such as this one squeeze out higher-wage earners, who typically are the older, more experienced workers. Those individuals tend to have more savings and better access to funds.
• Older individuals might have a better credit history, or they might have money put away
• Diminished retirement portfolios have changed the game.
• Older entrepreneurs are also motivated to venture out on their own as “lifetime employment” with a single company continues to diminish, and the potential for job security becomes less and less likely.

“The United States might be on the cusp of an entrepreneurship boom—not in spite of an aging population but because of it,” said Dane Stangler, the senior analyst who wrote the Kauffman study.

Older entrepreneurs bring a level of knowledge and experience that comes from years of working in the corporate world, said Guy Cortesi, CEO of eSolve Solutions Inc. “When you’ve worked for other companies, you understand what works and doesn’t work. You understand limitations and issues—too many meetings, for example—and know how to avoid those issues”.

Read the entire article @ Portfolio.com – Startup Boom