All tagged Ageism in the workplace
So what’s the average age of successful entrepreneurs in the US? Not just entrepreneurs in general, but the founders at the fastest growing new ventures?
45.
That’s right. The average successful, high growth entrepreneur is, at founding, far older than conventional wisdom and the mainstream media would have us believe.
In my post on Monday (Are You Too Old?), I argued that, as an experienced professional, you had to lean into your age and experience instead of trying to downplay or avoid it. As such, you either look for those who value your experience and work with them, or take matters into your own hands, and do something for yourself. In other words, take it as a Call To Action and do what you want.
The interesting thing is that in trying to do what we want, many of us are hounded - constrained - by the same conventional wisdom that drove us to this point in the first place.
I recently came across a survey of US Tech Start-Up Founders by the venture-capital firm, First Round Capital, that yielded an insight that I think most of us, explicitly or implicitly, know to be the case:
37% said age is the strongest investor bias against founders, while 28% cited gender and 26% cited race.
Age is the strongest investor bias. No surprise there. And while the survey was focused on Tech, I don’t think it would be a stretch to envision this to be the case across start ups in other sectors as well.
