NOT ALL TECH FOUNDERS START IN THEIR 20s, WHEW!

This post title came from an article I read at Webpronews.com.  It starts off like this “The common belief that all entrepreneurs who start tech companies are in their 20s or teens is being challenged by a lengthy study that started in 1995 thru 2005 which found that only 1 percent of American founders were teenagers.” In fact the average age is 39, my current age.

Whew! I thought I was at least 3-5 years behind. I had that foolish idea in my head from having read too many of those Business Week articles with mini profiles of American Tech Entrepreneurs in their 20s loaded with funding, many of them undeservingly so. But that’s another post. You see I founded by first start up Maverick Media in 1998, at age 28.

So When I read that Webpronews article, I realised that I may in fact have been 10 years ahead, even living mostly in Jamaica. Additionally, the fact that I had another successful career as an investigative journalist prior to becoming a full time entrepreneur makes it all sweeter. Or maybe since I’m going to touch that glorious 40 mark later this year makes me want to grab at any straws that may make me seem younger, but nope. I really like where I am, especially since a lot of the biographies of entrepreneurs I’ve been reading for the last 15 years clearly show that the early forties is where the big money, greater power to change and influence things comes. We’re talking about next level shit here. Who wouldn’t welcome that. As an entrepreneur in my late 30s it’s also fun watching the younguns…the brash teens and twentysomethings who wake up drooling at the thought of world domination, already thinking they know everything and will become Steve Jobs in a year.

In my 10 years so far as an entrepreneur I’ve been either a team member or co-founder of start up companies covering areas such as web development, mobile marketing, online communities, live radio and TV streaming online, internet marketing, online greetings, online dating, social networks, consulting here in Jamaica, the Caribbean and the States. I’m now invested in 3 internet/mobile related businesses, a growing internet marketing solutions company and wondering what other venture I can get involved in. I also intend within the next couple of years co-found a Caribbean venture capital firm with colleagues of mine.

As an entrepreneur, I’ve have had spectacular successes and sweet failures and I look forward to increasingly more successes and fewer failures as I learn to execute better every day and with every project. This entrepreneurial shtick is addictive and very fulfilling! Anyway back to the Webpronews article. It goes on to say that “The study by Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and researchers at Duke and Harvard found that the majority (92%) of founders had bachelor degrees, 31 percent had master degrees, and 10 percent had PhDs. Close to half of the degrees were in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. One third was in business, accounting and finance.”  This is cool but doesn’t the fact that some of the richest people in the world young like the Facebook founders and iconic Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are in fact college dropouts. A delicious fact that some of you can and will use when your parents or spouses ask you WTF, when you jump off the education train and on to the entrepreneurial journey.  AHhh yeah.

The article then went on to say, “While education clearly is an advantage for tech founders in the United States, experience also is a key factor,” Vivek Wadhwa, lead researcher, Harvard Law School Wertheim fellow, Duke University executive in residence,” said. Ahh that word, experience so many of my fellow entrepreneurs(all now in their mid -to late thirties too) can give you book length stories about their experiences along the way..but as Maya Angelou said…“wouldn’t give nothing for that journey now.”

What are you working on?

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