>The mean founder age for [...] is 45.0. [...] Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success.
To me, "prior experience" favors B2B startups and those tend to be founded by 40-something entrepreneurs. (I made a previous comment about this.[1])
In contrast for B2C, many observers (VCs like Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson, etc) have noticed that experience doesn't necessarily help consumer-facing internet companies and viral smartphone apps. (E.g. Twitter founder Ev Williams started Medium at age 40 but it's still losing money and it's not as successful as Twitter.)
The counterintuitive conclusions about median age of 45 may be happening because the study doesn't group the data between B2B vs B2C. It's the B2C startups that have more exposure in mainstream media and they dominate pop culture conversation. The numerous B2B startups become hidden as a sort of "dark matter" in the business universe because they probably comprise most of the successes but ironically get the least amount of news coverage.
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>The mean founder age for [...] is 45.0. [...] Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success.
To me, "prior experience" favors B2B startups and those tend to be founded by 40-something entrepreneurs. (I made a previous comment about this.[1])
In contrast for B2C, many observers (VCs like Bill Gurley, Fred Wilson, etc) have noticed that experience doesn't necessarily help consumer-facing internet companies and viral smartphone apps. (E.g. Twitter founder Ev Williams started Medium at age 40 but it's still losing money and it's not as successful as Twitter.)
The counterintuitive conclusions about median age of 45 may be happening because the study doesn't group the data between B2B vs B2C. It's the B2C startups that have more exposure in mainstream media and they dominate pop culture conversation. The numerous B2B startups become hidden as a sort of "dark matter" in the business universe because they probably comprise most of the successes but ironically get the least amount of news coverage.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16902662