New Research Suggests That Older Entrepreneurs Are More Successful

The media likes to focus on the outlandish success of the Mark Zuckerbergs and Elon Musks of the world, both of whom made their first million before the age of thirty (and then some). But new research published by MIT and the US Census Bureau puts the view that entrepreneurship is just something for young people in sharp relief. It’s not.

The data compiled by Javier Miranda, J. Daniel Kim, and Pierre Azoulay indicates that the most successful entrepreneurs are those in middle age, casting doubt on Zuckerberg’s assertion that young people are “just smarter.” The older you get, the more you stack the deck in your favor.

Why Are Older Entrepreneurs More Successful Than Their Younger Counterparts?

The study’s authors offered some explanations for why older entrepreneurs might be more successful than their younger counterparts. The primary reason, they claim, is that older entrepreneurs have had many years of experience in leadership roles and have built strong life skills along the way. A young person may feel like they are a master of the universe while riding high on the coattails of success. But it takes a mature mind to put that success into context, calmly identify problems, and keep the team onboard with what’s going on.

The researchers put forward a second, more concrete reason for the apparent success of those in middle age: they have more time to build their financial and social capital. That’s a fancy way of saying that they have more money and more contacts they can rely on to get their businesses off the ground. It’s not so much what you know but who you know that counts in the early stages of an enterprise.

Older folks also understand that it takes a long time to achieve anything of worth in life and that the process is often highly detailed, whether that’s finding a low cost mailbox to cut costs, or trawling through job applications before settling on the perfect person for a particular role.

Why Do We View Entrepreneurship As Something For Young People?

There are fewer young entrepreneurs today than at any other point in history, and yet the prevailing narrative is that it is something for the younger generation. The origin of this sentiment appears to come from publication bias: the media’s obsession with young people with successful, trendy businesses. The modern incarnation of this began with the success of Bill Gates in the 1980s and 1990s. Gates was a brilliant young genius who took Microsoft from a small firm in Silicon Valley into the biggest company in the world, amassing a personal fortune north of $50 billion.

Since Gates, we’ve had numerous other young entrepreneurs hit the press, including Steve Jobs who create a stir with the ups and downs of the Apple Corporation, and Elon Musk and his present battle with short sellers at Tesla.

The bias in Silicon Valley is that entrepreneurs have to be young, sexy, and brash. But in the rest of the economy – where the majority of people work – that’s not the case at all. For most, becoming an entrepreneur is probably best left until you’re past fifty.

This is a contributed post.