What Is The Right Age To Start A Business?

There is No Timeline to Start Your Own Business: Any Age is the Right Age.

Starting your own business is a difficult task.
But achieving sustainable growth in your own business is even more difficult.
To start your own business, you need an innovative idea, passion, and restless hard work.
To sustain business growth, you need expertise, experience, and competitive advantage.
Starting and sustaining your own business need the above ingredients together.
Having all of them at one point in time is practically not possible.
All these ingredients never exactly overlap the age timeline.
Each stage on the age timeline has a unique combination of ingredients required to start and sustain your own business.
Let us see which unique combination of ingredients are likely to be picked at specific stages on the age timeline.

Timeline Stage - 1: Early Twenties

You are full of energy and enthusiasm.
Being open to unconventional ways of doing conventional things, you dare to follow your dreams and ideas, high on risk-taking ability, and stamina to work for long hours.
As a passionate youth, you have almost no overhead to run and no responsibility to fulfil.
Your age and time allow you to take risks because you don’t have anything to lose apart from the opportunity itself.
Being tech-friendly and adaptive, you tend to choose an emerging segment or create your product category, which does not exist.
Largely tech and net-based startups have been founded by those who were in their early twenties.
Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Steve Jobs of Apple, Bill Gates of Microsoft, Michael Dell of Dell, and Jaakko Lisalo of Angry Birds are some of the examples who have created a benchmark success in their early twenties.
Some of these people have left their education and are dropped out of school/college.
One of the prominent examples is Mark Zuckerberg.
He is truly an inspiration for many youths across the globe.
Hence proved that education and age is not the barrier to start and sustain your own business.
It does not mean that you don’t need any formal education.
One should remember that when Mark Zuckerberg decided to drop out, he had the Harvard tag with him.
Starting and running your own business requires you to be multitasking as you are starting it from scratch.
You may also need to stay up the whole night to meet the deadlines and prepare for the 9 AM pitch.

Timeline Stage - 2: Early Thirties

There is a myth among people that you need to be in your 20s and drop out of some premium high tech university to start and sustain your own business.
The early thirties is the timeline where you have completed your formal education.
Based on your inclination, you have joined and worked with the company/industry.
You have a blend of knowledge and skill; that is why it is also called a sweet spot for entrepreneurs.
You are still energetic, and now you have added the know-how of the business.
Due to rich experience and exposure, you have good market insight.
Your initial struggle from the ground level has made you tolerant.
You have kaizen focus on shoestring operation and execution.
Because of additional responsibilities of personal life you are very cautious and calculative in your early thirties.
Having a perfect combination of your industry experience, technological know-how, and high aspiration, you are likely to build a solution that is in an emerging product category.

Timeline Stage - 3: Early Forties

With great exposure and networking, you are well familiar with the opportunity spot in the market.
You tend to target the emerging need in an existing marketplace.
Banking on your past experiments with the category you have new ways of doing things along with the tried and tested methods.
Through wisdom and indulgence in the industry for a long time, you have developed an instinct that helps you make better decisions.
You have the opportunity to utilise and leverage the learning of one channel or category in another one.
This can result in extraordinary solutions and offerings.
You have insight into what will work and what will not work for your category.
You can crack the best deals with your tie-ups, networks, and reputation.
You are still active, and you have become a domain expert in your early forties.
This helps flourish your ideas into reality.
Steve Jobs indeed started his own business at an early age, but if you see his flagship products like iPhone, iPad and iMac were launched when he was in his early forties.
That means maturity plays an important role in understanding customer insight and market dynamics.
Amazon, Cisco, Linkedin, Hitachi, P&G, Oracle, and Xerox are some of the best examples of businesses established by experienced entrepreneurs in their early forties.

Timeline Stage - 4: Post Fifties

Some may argue that it’s too late, but your intellect, motivation, and brilliant ideas have no expiry.
In fact, at this timeline, you have honed competencies, have stable sources of income, and past credentials to lure the investors.
You have your say in vendors and suppliers with good rapport and credit.
Your risk-taking capacity increases with time as you grow mature and confident.
Though you may not have the same energy as earlier, you can buy them in terms of the right people and resources.
You have realised your strengths now so you will only play on your strengths.
With your expertise and knowledge, you may provide a business-launching platform for other businesses and get a return on your established setup.

The Different Ages of Success

Here is a list of some of the most remarkable founders and their business ventures to help you better understand why every age is the right age to start your own business:

Sr. No.	Company	Founder	Age
1	IBM	Charles Flint	61
2	Bank Of America	Amadeo Giannini	60
3	Kawasaki	Kawasaki Shozo	59
4	Porsche	Ferdinand Porsche	56
5	Las Vegas Sands	Sheldon Adelson	55
6	Nissan Motor	Yoshisuke Aikawa	53
7	Nestlé	Henri Nestlé	52
8	Hyundai Motor	Chung Ju-Yung	51
9	Starbucks	Gordon Bowker	51
10	Morgan Stanley	Harold Stanley	50
11	Seagate	Alan Shugart	49
12	Adidas	Adolf Dassler	48
13	Goldman Sachs	Marcus Goldman	48
14	Wells Fargo	Henry Wells	47
15	Costco	James Sinegal	47
16	General Electric	Thomas Edison	45
17	AOL	Jim Kimsey	44
18	Walmart	Sam Walton	44
19	Adobe	Charles Geschke	43
20	Rolls-Royce	Henry Royce	43
21	Comcast	Ralph Roberts	43
22	Starbucks	Jerry Baldwin	42
23	Adobe	John Warnock	42
24	Honda	Soichiro Honda	42
25	Coca-Cola	Asa Candler	41
26	Gap	Donald Fisher	41
27	Intel	Robert Noyce	41
28	Volvo	Gustaf Larson	40
29	Ford	Henry Ford	40
30	Inditex	Amancio Ortega Zara	39
31	HTC	Cher Wang	39
32	Intel	Gordon Moore	39
33	Lenovo	Liu Chuanzhi	39
34	Hugo Boss	Hugo Boss	38
35	Sony	Masaru Ibuka	38
36	Gap	Doris Fisher	37
37	Hershey’s	Milton Hershey	37
38	Carlsberg	J. C. Jacobsen	36
39	Hitachi	Namihei Odaira	36
40	LinkedIn	Reid Hoffman	36
41	Macy’s	Rowland Macy	36
42	Salesforce	Marc Benioff	35
43	Boeing	William Boeing	35
44	Procter & Gamble	William Procter	35
45	Wells Fargo	William Fargo	34
46	Procter & Gamble	James Gamble	33
47	Oracle	Larry Ellison	33
48	Peugeot	Armand Peugeot	32
49	Baidu	Robin Li	32
50	Acer	Stan Shih	32
51	Xerox	Chester Carlson	31
52	Cisco	Leonard Bosack	31
53	Intuit	Scott Cook	31
54	Siemens	Werner von Siemens	31
55	H&M	Erling Persson	30
56	Nintendo	Fusajiro Yamauchi	30
57	Amazon	Jeff Bezos	30
58	Rolls-Royce	Charles Rolls	29
59	Visa	Dee Hock	29
60	Expedia	Richard Barton	29
61	Walgreens	Charles Walgreen	28
62	L’Oréal	Eugene Schueller	28
63	eBay	Pierrre Omidyar	28
64	Cisco	Sandra Lerner	28
65	FedEx	Fred Smith	27
66	Whole foods	John Mackey	27
67	AOL	Steve Case	27
68	HP	David Packard	26
69	Nike	Phil Knight	26
70	Apple	Steve Wozniak	26
71	Sony	Akio Morita	25
72	Google	Larry Page	25
73	Best Buy	Richard Schulze	25
74	Google	Sergey Brin	25
75	HP	William Hewlett	25
76	Heineken	Gerard Heineken	23
77	Harley-Davidson	William Harley	23
78	Harley-Davidson	Arthur Davidson	22
79	Microsoft	Paul Allen	22
80	Disney	Walt Disney	22
81	Tesco	Jack Cohen	21
82	Apple	Steve Jobs	21
83	Burberry	Thomas Burberry	21
84	Microsoft	Bill Gates	20
85	UPS	James Casey	19
86	Facebook	Mark Zuckerberg	19
87	Dell	Michael Dell	18

In Conclusion

So there is no right age to start your own business, and you can also say there is always a right age to start your own business.
The decision of starting your own business has to be influenced either by the opportunities visible around you or by your readiness to hunt for the new opportunities.