ENTREPRENEUR SPECIAL Stop worrying about what is the right age to start your venture
We're often reluctant to to start something if we know there's no chance of finishing it. In Heather Lindsley's short story Mayflies she considers a family of women who have a peculiar medical problem: the women have lifespans of only about a week. They are born remembering the memories of their ancestors, they mature in about two days, they're fertile adults for about three or four days, they give birth, and then they age, die and turn to dust.
With
such short lives, even simple acts like reading a novel become major
life-altering decisions. The story of course is a parable for our own
short lives. We are all running out of time.
In my earlier article, I made a case that there was no such thing as a "right" personality type for being an entrepreneur. But is there a stage of life that we should consider appropriate for starting new ventures? Or do we just leave it to people of a certain age group? When you are young, you may have less to lose, but you don't know much about the world or about yourself. However, that could be an advantage. Not knowing what you cannot do allows you to attempt things older people dismiss out of hand.
The renowned physicist, Michael Polanyi wrote, "I would never have conceived my theory (of adsorption of gases), let alone have made a great effort to verify it, if I had been more familiar with major developments in physics that were taking place. Moreover, my initial ignorance of the powerful, false objections that were raised against my ideas protected those ideas from being nipped in the bud."
The opposite might be true as you get older. You may know more, have more experience and better contacts, but you also may have more to lose. It is more difficult, for example, to quit your job to start a venture than to start one before you ever had a job. And even if you don't quit your job, you might still find it more difficult to risk failure when you already have a certain status and reputation built up over the years. And young people have a lot to lose too.
How about acing their exams and preparing for college? Or focusing on a degree that can open up corporate careers? So it becomes easy to come up with all kinds of excuses not to start a venture that you dream of starting. You tell yourself that you will graduate, or save up or raise enough money first. Or that you will wait till your children are finished with school or you have reached certain milestones in your career.
In many cases, these considerations are perfectly valid and should be part of your decision to start a venture. But these are simply constraints on your decision and should not become reasons for postponing the decision itself.
Youcef Es-skouri is a teenage entrepreneur from Morocco. He began what eventually became GeekFtour by organizing an iftar (when people gather together in the evening to break their fast during Ramadan) for geeks he knew through Facebook. Today the venture organizes iftars in multiple cities with tickets getting sold out seconds after they are available.
GeekFtour's iftars include team building exercises, calligraphy, music, gaming and very short inspirational talks. Teen entrepreneurs are also starting ventures all over India. Like Avani Singh, founder of Ummeed, that trains women from the slums of Delhi to become taxi and e-rickshaw drivers. And Food King founder, Sarathbabu Elumalai who began his entrepreneurial career early, selling idlis his mom made, while he was still in school. Much older people start successful ventures too.
Dr Muhammed Yunus was already a professor and head of the economics department at Chittagong University when he started Grameen Bank. Peter Eigen had retired from a long career in economic development at the World Bank and other organizations when he started Transparency International, the global organization that publishes the Global Corruption Barometer every year. And when the Kauffman Foundation did a survey of over 600 entrepreneurs in the US, they were surprised to find that twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five.
In my earlier article, I made a case that there was no such thing as a "right" personality type for being an entrepreneur. But is there a stage of life that we should consider appropriate for starting new ventures? Or do we just leave it to people of a certain age group? When you are young, you may have less to lose, but you don't know much about the world or about yourself. However, that could be an advantage. Not knowing what you cannot do allows you to attempt things older people dismiss out of hand.
The renowned physicist, Michael Polanyi wrote, "I would never have conceived my theory (of adsorption of gases), let alone have made a great effort to verify it, if I had been more familiar with major developments in physics that were taking place. Moreover, my initial ignorance of the powerful, false objections that were raised against my ideas protected those ideas from being nipped in the bud."
The opposite might be true as you get older. You may know more, have more experience and better contacts, but you also may have more to lose. It is more difficult, for example, to quit your job to start a venture than to start one before you ever had a job. And even if you don't quit your job, you might still find it more difficult to risk failure when you already have a certain status and reputation built up over the years. And young people have a lot to lose too.
How about acing their exams and preparing for college? Or focusing on a degree that can open up corporate careers? So it becomes easy to come up with all kinds of excuses not to start a venture that you dream of starting. You tell yourself that you will graduate, or save up or raise enough money first. Or that you will wait till your children are finished with school or you have reached certain milestones in your career.
In many cases, these considerations are perfectly valid and should be part of your decision to start a venture. But these are simply constraints on your decision and should not become reasons for postponing the decision itself.
Youcef Es-skouri is a teenage entrepreneur from Morocco. He began what eventually became GeekFtour by organizing an iftar (when people gather together in the evening to break their fast during Ramadan) for geeks he knew through Facebook. Today the venture organizes iftars in multiple cities with tickets getting sold out seconds after they are available.
GeekFtour's iftars include team building exercises, calligraphy, music, gaming and very short inspirational talks. Teen entrepreneurs are also starting ventures all over India. Like Avani Singh, founder of Ummeed, that trains women from the slums of Delhi to become taxi and e-rickshaw drivers. And Food King founder, Sarathbabu Elumalai who began his entrepreneurial career early, selling idlis his mom made, while he was still in school. Much older people start successful ventures too.
Dr Muhammed Yunus was already a professor and head of the economics department at Chittagong University when he started Grameen Bank. Peter Eigen had retired from a long career in economic development at the World Bank and other organizations when he started Transparency International, the global organization that publishes the Global Corruption Barometer every year. And when the Kauffman Foundation did a survey of over 600 entrepreneurs in the US, they were surprised to find that twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five.
Other
studies show the existence of a growing demographic of women
entrepreneurs aged between 40 and 60 years. Just as there is no
particular personality trait that is definitively correlated with
starting and succeeding as an entrepreneur, there is no particular
age that is more appropriate for becoming an entrepreneur. The key
here is not to chase the perfect condition for starting a
venture.
Instead, take into account all your constraints and all your resources, especially who you are, what you know and whom you know and try to focus on the question, "Given my personality, given my age and life constraints, what kind of venture can I and should I start?"
Constraints are very useful things, because they force you to become more creative. You should not let them determine your decision. Instead, you can put them to work for your venture. An obvious way to do this would be: if you are young, you can start ventures that appeal to young people - Facebook and Friendz.
If you are old, start ventures that appeal to the elderly - Good Grips kitchen appliances for people suffering from arthritis and Vatsalya for eldercare. Or you can think about a company that leverages youth to do things for older people who may not be able to do those things -- a moving company that hires young body builders, for example. Or how about a venture that inspires and facilitates retirees to educate young people all over India? To the best of my knowledge this venture does not yet exist. Why not? Consider some facts.
Around 65 million children will come into the education system in India EVERY YEAR for the foreseeable future. We simply do not have enough well-educated teachers to teach these children. Yet everywhere I go I encounter bored and depressed retirees who are lonely because their children are away in another city or another country.
Now consider the fact that older people who are engaged with younger people in productive and impactful activities are likely to be healthier and happier as they age. Isn't it astonishing that we maybe throwing away our best resources at both ends of the age spectrum? In Lindsley's thoughtful story, the heroine chooses to live her life ife responsibly but also with courage.
Science-fiction also has a great many stories in which people live really long lives. Having all the time in the world also raises all kind of problem. The moral is that it's not the time we have left that makes something worth doing but its doing worthwhile things that makes time worth anything.
In sum, stop worrying about what is the right age to start your venture. Simply start ventures that make your time worthwhile even if you're not sure whether you can finish what you start. And maybe one or more of you will start ventures that inspire and make it easy for our senior citizens to invest in younger generations that will be building our futures - as a country and as a species.
By Saras Sarasvathy, an Isidore Horween Research Professor, The Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia.)
Instead, take into account all your constraints and all your resources, especially who you are, what you know and whom you know and try to focus on the question, "Given my personality, given my age and life constraints, what kind of venture can I and should I start?"
Constraints are very useful things, because they force you to become more creative. You should not let them determine your decision. Instead, you can put them to work for your venture. An obvious way to do this would be: if you are young, you can start ventures that appeal to young people - Facebook and Friendz.
If you are old, start ventures that appeal to the elderly - Good Grips kitchen appliances for people suffering from arthritis and Vatsalya for eldercare. Or you can think about a company that leverages youth to do things for older people who may not be able to do those things -- a moving company that hires young body builders, for example. Or how about a venture that inspires and facilitates retirees to educate young people all over India? To the best of my knowledge this venture does not yet exist. Why not? Consider some facts.
Around 65 million children will come into the education system in India EVERY YEAR for the foreseeable future. We simply do not have enough well-educated teachers to teach these children. Yet everywhere I go I encounter bored and depressed retirees who are lonely because their children are away in another city or another country.
Now consider the fact that older people who are engaged with younger people in productive and impactful activities are likely to be healthier and happier as they age. Isn't it astonishing that we maybe throwing away our best resources at both ends of the age spectrum? In Lindsley's thoughtful story, the heroine chooses to live her life ife responsibly but also with courage.
Science-fiction also has a great many stories in which people live really long lives. Having all the time in the world also raises all kind of problem. The moral is that it's not the time we have left that makes something worth doing but its doing worthwhile things that makes time worth anything.
In sum, stop worrying about what is the right age to start your venture. Simply start ventures that make your time worthwhile even if you're not sure whether you can finish what you start. And maybe one or more of you will start ventures that inspire and make it easy for our senior citizens to invest in younger generations that will be building our futures - as a country and as a species.
By Saras Sarasvathy, an Isidore Horween Research Professor, The Darden Graduate School of Business, University of Virginia.)
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