Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 61.
Sakichi Toyoda started Toyota when he was 59.
It's not really rare at all to start successful companies when you're older. Just go look at the history of big companies and you'll find plenty of examples.
IIRC, Sanders used to drive a beat-up old car around to all of his franchisees, checking to make sure the gravy was just perfect and the chicken was being made correctly.
When it wasn't, they said that he would curse enough to make a sailor blush, kicking pots and pans all around the kitchen, having a terrible fit. In really bad cases, he would take his "special equipment" back with him.
The reason he ended up going big was because he couldn't keep track of all the payments and legal paperwork by himself. The lawyer that ended up being a partner was told to go help clean out a desk -- and found it stuffed with checks totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Not sure of the veracity of that story, but it makes for a colorful anecdote! And it reinforces the #1 quality of good startups: focus on delivering value to the customer and the rest will work itself out.
However, Walton had been a successful manager for similar stores (IIRC, Ben Franklin) at both the store and area level before. Sanders had been in the food biz for decades as well. (I don't know about Toyoda.)
They started their "make it big" biz later in life, but they'd been in their biz for decades.
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Sam Walton started Walmart when he was 44.
Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 61.
Sakichi Toyoda started Toyota when he was 59.
It's not really rare at all to start successful companies when you're older. Just go look at the history of big companies and you'll find plenty of examples.
IIRC, Sanders used to drive a beat-up old car around to all of his franchisees, checking to make sure the gravy was just perfect and the chicken was being made correctly.
When it wasn't, they said that he would curse enough to make a sailor blush, kicking pots and pans all around the kitchen, having a terrible fit. In really bad cases, he would take his "special equipment" back with him.
The reason he ended up going big was because he couldn't keep track of all the payments and legal paperwork by himself. The lawyer that ended up being a partner was told to go help clean out a desk -- and found it stuffed with checks totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Not sure of the veracity of that story, but it makes for a colorful anecdote! And it reinforces the #1 quality of good startups: focus on delivering value to the customer and the rest will work itself out.
However, Walton had been a successful manager for similar stores (IIRC, Ben Franklin) at both the store and area level before. Sanders had been in the food biz for decades as well. (I don't know about Toyoda.)
They started their "make it big" biz later in life, but they'd been in their biz for decades.