Ageism warps our sense of who makes for a successful entrepreneur. It’s time to straighten things out

I would never diminish the accomplishments of (then) wunderkinds Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates , each of whom revolutionized how we work and communicate. Their early accomplishments, however, have reinforced society’s misconception of what makes for a successful founder: youth and irreverence.  

News flash: Steve, Mark, and Bill are outliers. They are boldface names today because of their unparalleled impact, but the truth is that most successful entrepreneurs are neither young nor irreverent: They are experienced, seasoned and… wait for it… around 50. 

Last month, The Wall Street Journal reporter Ben Cohen wrote an illuminating article about Morris Chang, who founded what is arguably one of the world’s most important companies, Taiwan Semiconductor , at 55. “He wasn’t successful despite his age,” Cohen writes, “He was successful because of his age.” And Chang is not the exception. “Older entrepreneurs are both more common and more productive than younger founders,” Cohen explains.

Cohen’s reporting draws on a March 2020 analysis published in the American Economic Review (AER) that used Census Bureau records and IRS data to identify 2.7 million founders in the U.S. who started companies between 2007 and 2014. The authors—four economists out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Northwestern University , and University of Pennsylvania —determined that “the highest success rates in entrepreneurship come from founders in middle age and beyond.” A 50-year-old founder is almost twice as likely to achieve major success as a 30-year-old founder. Founders in their early 20s had the lowest chance of success. 

What explains this disconnect between perception and reality? It’s simple: ageism. My eyes were opened to this in the course of researching my book, To the Top, when I had the privilege of interviewing dozens of women, including entrepreneurs, many of whom hit their strides in their 40s and 50s. 

There is much to be said for young entrepreneurs. They have an appetite for risk, boundless energy, and a sense of invincibility. They’re often on the cutting edge of technology and play a big part in driving our economy. Even Chang says that “younger people are more innovative when it comes to science and technical subjects,” Cohen writes. But the idea that youth predicts entrepreneurial success is a myth. In fact, the opposite is true. 

According to the AER study, “founders with both closer and longer experience in the specific industrial sector of the start-up see substantially greater success rates.” There are a host of reasons for why more seasoned, reasoned entrepreneurs succeed. One is that they have more to lose. The AER study showed that founders of the highest-growth companies left high-paying jobs. If you are willing to leave behind a big paycheck, you’re likely to have more than an inkling that your experience, network, and understanding of the market are going to pay off. 

It’s time we acknowledge that age is a tremendous predictor of success, not a hindrance. Let’s place value where it belongs. Let’s stop letting ageism skew our sense of who is winning at entrepreneurship and why. #tothetop