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

  1. You are full of energy and enthusiasm.
  2. 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.
  3. As a passionate youth, you have almost no overhead to run and no responsibility to fulfil.
  4. Your age and time allow you to take risks because you don’t have anything to lose apart from the opportunity itself.
  5. Being tech-friendly and adaptive, you tend to choose an emerging segment or create your product category, which does not exist.
  6. Largely tech and net-based startups have been founded by those who were in their early twenties.
  7. 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.
  8. Some of these people have left their education and are dropped out of school/college.
  9. One of the prominent examples is Mark Zuckerberg.
  10. He is truly an inspiration for many youths across the globe.
  11. Hence proved that education and age is not the barrier to start and sustain your own business.
  12. It does not mean that you don’t need any formal education.
  13. One should remember that when Mark Zuckerberg decided to drop out, he had the Harvard tag with him.
  14. Starting and running your own business requires you to be multitasking as you are starting it from scratch.
  15. 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

  1. With great exposure and networking, you are well familiar with the opportunity spot in the market.
  2. You tend to target the emerging need in an existing marketplace.
  3. Banking on your past experiments with the category you have new ways of doing things along with the tried and tested methods.
  4. Through wisdom and indulgence in the industry for a long time, you have developed an instinct that helps you make better decisions.
  5. You have the opportunity to utilise and leverage the learning of one channel or category in another one.
  6. This can result in extraordinary solutions and offerings.
  7. You have insight into what will work and what will not work for your category.
  8. You can crack the best deals with your tie-ups, networks, and reputation.
  9. You are still active, and you have become a domain expert in your early forties.
  10. This helps flourish your ideas into reality.
  11. 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.
  12. That means maturity plays an important role in understanding customer insight and market dynamics.
  13. 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

  1. 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.
  2. 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.

Also Read:

Top 10 Things Every Business Owner Should Know & Do.

Business Success Tips Every Business Owner Should Know

Top 10 Businessmen in the Industry & What You Can Learn From Them