You are too old for a start up

Essential Elements for Start Ups

Don asked a great question, am I too old to launch a game changing start up?

Let's look at history:

• Bill Porter founded e-Trade in 1982 at the age of 54, changing the way equities are traded.
• Bernie Marcus founded Home Depot in 1979 at the age of 50.
• Ray Kroc was 51 when he stumbled on the formula for McDonalds.
• John Pemberton was 55 when he started Coca-Cola, creating the soft drink category.
• Henry Ford was 45 when he started producing model T's.
• Sam Walton was 44 when he opened the first Wal-mart.

The list goes on and on.  Granted, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates started well before their 50's.

If age is not the qualifier for launching a game changing startup, what is?  There are three essential elements that must exist simultaneously for game changing start ups to succeed.

• Passion
• Market potential
• Team building

The founder's passion is essential, joined with passion of the team required to launch the business.   Regardless of industry, research supports that only half of new businesses survive longer than 5 years, only one-third survive longer than 10 years.  Putting in long hours is a given, start ups require lots of care and feeding, and that requires passion from everyone.

Market potential in the sense of building a better mouse trap and having the world beat a path to your door is still applicable.  Is your distruptive start up filling a need or a me too?  Can you differentiate your start up sufficiently to stand out from the crowd?  Coca-Cola's differentiator was it's recipe, branding and bottling network.  In the days when soda was limited to a fountain, bottling with the distinctive branding became the key differentiator that catapulted Coca-Cola to prominence.   Can you develop an Ideal Customer Profile and does your differentiator map to their preferences?

Founders are often called out, but it is often the team they build around them that carries the innovation forward.  Pemberton died two years after founding Coca-Cola, a team of savvy bottlers propelled the product into new markets.  Teams aren't just the collection of people in your office or company, they are often the partners or distributors you attract.  Your teams need to see the same market potential and have the same passion you do.

Age is not a handicap when it comes to start ups.  It can be an enabler.   Older entrepenuers can have a wealth of experience and financial stability that distinguishes them from younger start ups.

Larger companies like Cisco and GE have taken senior personnel, removed them from the corporate heirarchy, placing them into incubators with talent and resources to enable them to develop their next internal start up.

It's not too late to disrupt with the right passion, market potential and team.

Ascendiosa can help accelerate your start up's trajectory.

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