During past few months many of my friends started their new businesses. By the way: so did I. It’s quite funny because it looks right everyone’s starting a new business now, at least among my friends. I haven’t really thought why all those entrepreneurships start this year. It’s probably a coincidence – people are in different age, different knowledge and experience, different areas of software business (OK, all of us actually are in the software business), even period of time spent on preparation differs. It just has to be a coincidence.
However, I started to think about all of that after reading great Robert May’s article about the best age to become an entrepreneur. Robert gives list of advantages for both youth and experience. The former covers: energy, amount of free time, ability and time to recover from failure, open mind and narrow learning curve. The latter contains: amount of money dedicated to establish business, number of connections, wisdom gathered through the years of work and patience.
If I had to choose a single factor from above lists, which I believe is most important (but not mandatory!) to achieve a success I’d take wisdom. Wisdom allows you to avoid many mistakes, yet it quite often holds you back from doing visionary things. I treat wisdom as a driver to choose better path when you’re on a crossroads. Yes, if I had to choose I’d be on the „experience” side.
Coming back to all those new entrepreneurships around me I think that fortunately not everyone has to choose the side. I can see a couple of businesses where the youth is mixed with the experience. There are people from both worlds among founders. The mix levels weak points and leverages strong ones. This is my answer to a question when to become an entrepreneur – being both young and experienced. You just need at least two persons to do that.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Paweł,
I enjoyed reading your post although I do not agree with your conclusion. I believe other two attributes are crucial for an entrepreneur: having a significant portion of luck (I know very few of them, who planned their big future) and the ability to sustain and overcome huge friction (http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/clauswtz/clwt000b.htm).
Thanks for yet another interesting reading.
Igor
I have to agree that both luck and ability to manage friction are crucial for achieving success as an entrepreneur and I didn’t mention either of them (I missed more of them, I believe). However I would put those factors on side of netiher youth nor experience. They don’t fall into this classification – you can’t just learn to be lucky.
Yet still if I had to choose only single one factor, which is the most important I’d go for wisdom. Wisdom neither guarantee nor is necessary to achieve a success, but that’s the same with luck and friction management – they all just bring you closer to your goal.