Musings on Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Wednesday, August 21, 2002Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, apparently lost his way while flying his own plane across America. He landed in Bozeman and ended up touring the countryside and dining with some area entrepreneurs. Click here for more.
No less of an authority than The Wall Street Journal reports, "Older can mean better, when it comes to entrepreneurs." It cites a study in the prestigious Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report that says 36% of the entrepreneurial activity in the U.S. is attributable to entrepreneurs aged from 45 to 64, a ratio that is much greater than the global average of 22%. On its face, that seems to be good news as the country ages.
The Journal goes on to point out that older people tend to have more industry experience, larger personal networks, and greater amounts of capital to back new businesses. No doubt, all of these assets are valuable. However, these correlations, while interesting and relevant, shouldn't be confused with causation.
The Journal article, itself touches upon a deeper variable: opportunity cost. Older, experienced, highly educated, connected people with money in the bank tend also to have opportunity costs, which raise the bar on the kind of startup they are most likely to launch. After all, when you have got something to lose, the uncertainty of a startup translates into real risk. I suspect that it's the dynamic interplay among these personal endowments and opportunity cost that are important.
In 2000, according to the U.S. Census, the median age in the country was 35 years old. The median age at company launch of last year's Inc. 500 was 34. Maybe age, by itself, doesn't tell us all that much about a person's potential to be an entrepreneur. In the end, entrepreneurs are defined by what they do, not who they are.
Dee Russell*, one of the original members of Pioneer Entrepreneurs, recently put down her thoughts on how to get the most out of membership in the network in the form of an open letter to new members. It's members like Dee who will make the network valuable and successful.
*Dee's online profile is available only to Pioneer Entrepreneurs members.