That’s the question Vivek Wadhwa and colleagues ask in a newly released survey study:
Contrary to the popular belief that tech entrepreneurs start their companies
in their teens or early 20s, we found that the average and median age of
founders was 39. Twice as many were older than 50 as were younger than 25. And
there were twice as many over 60 as under 20 …
We found the vast majority (92%) of founders held bachelor’s degrees, 31% held
master’s degrees, and 10% had completed PhDs. Nearly half of these degrees were
in science-, technology-, engineering-, and mathematics-related disciplines. And
one-third were in business, accounting, and finance …Almost every major U.S. university was represented in the ranks of company
founders—including schools such as The University of Southern Mississippi and
Akron University. Only 8% graduated from Ivy League schools. But that was
significantly higher than their proportion of all graduates. In other words, you
don’t need to graduate from an elite university to become an entrepreneur, but
graduates of Ivy League schools were more likely to become entrepreneurs than
others …Founders holding MBA degrees established their companies the soonest compared
to other advanced-degree holders—an average of 13 years after graduation.
Master’s-degree holders took 14.7 years and bachelor’s degree holders took 16.7
years. Those with PhDs typically waited 21 years.
More here.
May 1st, 2008 at 2:35 pm
This study certainly fits what’s happened in Portland and I’m sure Silicon Valley, etc. New companies are overwhelmingly started by experienced managers and engineers from existing companies, who know not only the technology but how to manage people, finances and strategy. They also have the connections to attract capital and employees. There’s a locally famous map here of the Silicon Forest Universe showing a galaxy of some 370 companies that all spun off from, or are closely related to, either Tektronix or Intel.
It also fits with the questions I have about the youth focus around the creative class. I understand the piece about attracting numbers of young creatives helping a region’s economic future. But I don’t see an acknowledgment of the importance of creative class people in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, etc. When you do the numbers on creative class talent in a city, it doesn’t just count the 20 & 30 somethings. I’d really like to see some studies of creative class life stages.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:09 pm
As we’ve discussed before, the reality underlying this data is that only the older folks with home equity or other collateral to secure capital can obtain the necessary start-up capital. We could explode our economy with an overhaul of our outdated credit system that values cash reserves and net worth instead of talent. The federal government should do this lending and use the interest to save social security, build infrastructure, underwrite health care costs; etc., etc. It’s such a no-brainer.
May 4th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Hmm. It seems that the study is of all entrepreneurs, which means that serial entrepreneurs will tend to distort the overall data (in several possible ways, depending on the methodology).
I’d say that the stereotypes mentioned are fairly representative of first-time entrepreneurs, and likely to remain so over time.