In my forties, I launched a venture fund and accelerator and pioneered the SEIS market in the UK. Now aged 51, I am the CEO and founder of a next generation media company and Web3.0 startup. My experience of being a founder later in life can be seen within a broader societal context - in which working lives are longer, retirement age is being pushed further back, and starting a business is seen as just a legitimate career path as any other. Added to this, people my age are more likely to suffer from longer-term unemployment - with over 50s making up for one in four of all unemployed people in the UK.

It shouldn’t be a surprise then, that more and more startup founders are likely to be older in age. But the way in which founders are often featured in popular culture and in the media might lead us to believe that a successful, entrepreneurial, and ‘blue flame’ spirit resides only amongst the young. The startup and VC ecosystem often gets a little carried away since the likes of Mark Zuckerberg came on the scene - the idealised “blue flame” founder and a desirable proposition for VCs.

There are, however, so many reasons why starting a business later in life - and investing in older founders - is a great move.

Age as an ingredient for success

Let’s consider some of the ingredients for a successful business - you need vision and leadership, a strong team of people who buy into the vision, and often, but not always, access to capital. Undoubtedly, there are plenty of younger entrepreneurs who can access and enjoy many of these ingredients, but if we consider them individually, it’s easy to see how they might lean in favour of an older founder.

Vision and Leadership

Most of us need time - to work out who we are, what we might want from our lives, what drives us. With age also comes confidence, surety, and a whole host of experiences to draw from. We start to know our strengths and weaknesses better.

It’s also easier to have a vision for the future when you also have experience of the past. I am currently focused on building what I believe will become a leading next generation media company - and I do so with knowledge and experience gained from the many media and tech companies that I have worked with in my career. I’ve seen how startups in the late 90s and early-to-mid 2000s have become the most powerful businesses of their decade, such as Facebook, Netflix and Google. There’s so much value to be had in these experiences - often we need to know what has come before in order to understand what might be ahead.

Founders need to be able to lead others, and the best way to understand leadership, and defining your leadership style, comes from being led by others in turn. Working for a great leader is brilliant, but even experience of being led poorly by a manager can be invaluable here - knowing what you don’t want can help you to build a business filled with the qualities and the people that you do want. I know that a lot of my own leadership style is a direct result of things that I have seen in business. It’s all about building something that works for you.

A strong, talented team

As a founder you need to know yourself and your strengths and weaknesses, and that takes experience. You can then find the people you need to help you get started with the business. As the CEO of a growing business, a major part of your role will be to find and attract talented people who fit with your team. Sometimes you have to help unlock their talent, and they bring their own strengths (and weaknesses). You need to know what good looks like - and that comes with experience.

Capital

Older founders - with decades of money-earning potential behind them - are also more likely to find themselves in a position in which they can get businesses off the ground themselves, using their own capital. They are more likely to be able to work for themselves without drawing an income and this ultimately can put them in a more commanding position, enjoying greater ownership of the company they are building, and without a need to rely on external backers.

In addition, throughout our careers we grow our network. When it comes to accessing capital, whether it be through friends and family or angel investors or institutional investors, the size and breadth of your network is key. I have a wide network of people that I can tap into in order to identify potential investors when I might need them.

Finally, with experience comes a better idea of what things do and should cost, so experienced founders make better use of the capital at their disposal. 

Work smart, not hard

It’s important that we consider the impact of starting and running a business on physical and mental health first and foremost. And whilst this is true of any founder at any age, we do tend to be at greater risk of health conditions the older we are.

One of the biggest health conditions that has become so significant in the last 20 years is mental health - the charity Mind estimates that one in four people in England will experience a mental health condition each year. Nearly half of all adults aged 55 and over reported experiencing depression and anxiety, according to research undertaken by Age UK in 2017.

Many startup founders will find that the long hours and the stress they must endure will take a toll of some kind on their health - and from a physiological point of view, this may be simply easier to manage at a younger age. It’s so important that we manage both our business and our health - and I think the key here is to redefine what we mean by “working hard”.

And as entrepreneurs, we need resilience too - something that life itself tends to build. As we age, we might also encounter additional life challenges on top of running a business - financial pressures like paying a mortgage, looking after a family and caring for ageing parents, and handling personal life changes that could even include divorce, sickness and upheaval at home.

Working hard doesn’t need to be a function of hours. At 51, I prefer to work smart. And this takes experience too. Doing only the things that only you can do, being experienced enough in many tasks and duties to be able to delegate and instruct others well so that they can do them, freeing you up to do the things that only you can do. You will by now in your career have developed your own efficient methodology of planning: setting the strategy and tactics, with your team defining tasks and allocating resources accordingly.

Taking the leap

Confidence, a wider network of contacts, a whole host of experiences to draw from - there are plenty of benefits to starting a business later in life. The idea that success comes only early on, or that people have only one ‘career’, is simply outmoded.

If our working lives are to be longer, why not make entrepreneurship a part of your journey? The most important thing is to consider those core three ingredients - vision, strong team and access to capital.  And the chances are, with decades of life and working experience under your belt, you’ll have them.