there seemed to be this very consistent finding that the likelihood of entrepreneurial success rises with age....... age reflects many, many things in life. We know that with age, many benefits accumulate, including your social ties — your relationship with suppliers and potential hires and co-founders — as well as financial wealth and human capital that you gain from working in different companies. ....... You could have the Zuckerbergs and Sheryl Sandbergs on a team, where you have a very young entrepreneur and perhaps an older manager to balance out those views. ....... when you look at just the Zuckerbergs and Gates of the world, you’re really cherry-picking the examples that the media likes to show. When we look at those individuals and their career histories, there is some evidence that over time they get better as operators and entrepreneurs of real companies. Even in that example, we have reasons to think that age is still an advantage in terms of being an entrepreneur. ...... this link between entrepreneurship and age is a really strong one. ......
...... They may know what’s happening, but they also know that there’s greater bargaining power against young entrepreneurs. ...... I’ve spoken to many executive MBA students who are in their early 40s and late 30s, and I’ve heard many perspectives that it might be too late for them to become entrepreneurs. What we want to do is discourage and dispel that myth because what we’re finding is they actually might be in the best position to start new companies. ........ We’re looking at immigrant entrepreneurs and the role that they play in creating jobs in the U.S. economy versus the jobs that are perhaps being “taken” by new immigrants in the U.S., and really comparing those two streams.
For women in the military, fending off unwanted male attention, including assault, is the job that never ends. Sandra Sidi tells the story of her time in Baghdad and the women who worked alongside her. https://t.co/mjwTWQ7fmJ
Steven Spielberg, rightly thought of as one of the most creative movie directors, once said, it makes sense to keep the same team and churn out movie after movie, like they produce cars at factories.
What has happened with technology and innovation in just the past 20 years has been amazing, but all that is nothing compared to what is about to happen. And it makes sense to firm up the basic template of entrepreneurship. So we can focus on the more important stuff, like the technology and the innovation.
Curiously that template is waist deep in politics and public policy. The very idea of who owns the company is about to fundamentally alter. The inevitable Universal Basic Income (UBI) will be a huge boost to the innovators. Without that true large scale wealth creation is simply out of reach. The UBI is the oxygen mask that takes you to the top of Everest.
The idea of the corporate culture should be on the cutting edges of social science fiction and egalitarian thinking. Treating people right does not take away from competition or innovation. The second coming of Steve Jobs was primarily that he had learned to treat people better, like he himself admitted. But it goes beyond smiles and handshakes. It is about making fundamental leaps on race and gender.
English: Steve Jobs shows off the white iPhone 4 at the 2010 Worldwide Developers Conference Español: Presentación del iPhone 4 por Steve Jobs en la Worldwide Developers Conference del año 2010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Steve Jobs was 52 when he announced the iPhone. That was in 2007. Years later, the Apple cofounder introduced the MacBook Air, App Store, and iPad. Tim Cook, who was 51 when he took over from Jobs, is building on his legacy. They both shattered a myth that the young rule the technology industry. ........ Research on successful technology firms by a team I led at Duke and Harvard in 2008 looked only at companies that had made it out of the garage and were generating at least $1 million in revenue. The research revealed that the average and median age of their founders was 39. Twice as many were older than 50 as were younger than 25. And twice as many were older than 60 as were younger than 20. In a follow-up project, we studied the backgrounds of 549 successful entrepreneurs in 12 high-growth industries. The average and median age of male founders in this group was 40, and a significant proportion were older than 50. ...... in every year from 1996 to 2013, Americans in the 55-to-64 age group started new businesses at a higher rate than those in their twenties and thirties. And the trend is building. Those ages 55 to 64 started 14 percent of all new businesses in 1996 but nearly 24 percent of them in 2013. ...... What makes entrepreneurs successful, as my team’s research revealed, is work and industry experience and management ability. These come with age. ..... The inexperience — and immaturity — of youth is one reason venture capitalists’ track record is so poor. In 2012, the Kauffman Foundation analyzed 20 years of investment data from nearly 100 venture funds. It found that the vast majority of them produced lower returns than did the public markets. ........ The experiment by Thiel to pay college students to drop out did not result in any world-changing startups. Most Thiel fellows joined other companies or went back to school. The Thiel Foundation quietly redesigned its program, which now provides an alternative education to children. Perhaps the realization set in that the innovation advantage isn’t provided by youth, but by knowledge, maturity, experience, and connections......... the average age at which Nobel laureates performed their prizewinning work and the average age at which inventors had their great achievement was 39. He also found that twice as many — 14 percent — were older than 50 as were younger than 26. Jones found that the average age of innovators is steadily rising, with the average age of greatest achievement for Nobel Prize winners and great tech inventors having increased six years, to 45, in the 20th century. ......... It also is easier to write code for a cellphone than to learn how to motivate and inspire employees, manage finances, and market products. But building a business requires all of those skills. That is why older entrepreneurs have more success. ...... A technology shift is happening that will dramatically alter the entrepreneurial landscape in the next few years. Several technologies — involving medicine, robotics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, 3D printing, and nanomaterials — are advancing at exponential rates and are converging. This is the same type of advance that is occurring with computers — with processing power doubling every 18 months, prices falling, and devices becoming smaller. A $500 laptop today has more computing power than did a Cray 2 supercomputer that cost $17.5 million in 1985 and had to be housed in a large building. ........ These advances are making it possible to solve the global problems of health, energy, education, and hunger. Inexpensive sensor-based devices, for example, allow the continual measurement of heart rate, temperature, movement, pressure and light. They can be used to build devices that keep track of blood pressure, glucose and blood oxygen levels, respiration and even sleeping habits. They also can be used to improve agriculture, monitor the environment and reduce food spoilage. Systems based on artificial intelligence can be used to make medical diagnoses, to drive autonomous cars, and to predict traffic patterns, crime and trends. Robotic devices will allow us to care for the elderly and automate routine processes. Digital tutors will be able to transform education. .......... These technologies will make it possible to create the next trillion-dollar industries and to better our lives. But they require knowledge of fields such as medicine, biotechnology, engineering, and nanotechnology. They require experience, an understanding of the problems people face, and cross-disciplinary skills. All of these come with age and experience, which middle-aged entrepreneurs have in abundance. That is why we need to get beyond the stereotypes and realize that
English: Elon Musk at the panel Tribeca Talks: Revenge of the Electric Car, for the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There was that thing in Zuccoti Park. People rallied against the so-called 1%. That 1% supposedly has 40% of the wealth. Much of it is inherited.
And there is the Piketty book that drew a lot of attention. He says, if wealth will get an annual 10% return, but labor will see less than 3% annual growth, then the gap will never close, it will keep widening.
And then there is this: global companies are sitting on $7 trillion in cash. Just sitting. Not doing anything with it. This is not money on that 10% train. How about $18 trillion?
One, I think there is an economic case to be made that if the gulf between the top 1% and the bottom 10% is too wide, that society is not likely to be growing at its optimum. I am talking economic theory. As to how to go about remedying? That is a debate. I am for ordinary people owning equity stakes in many more companies, and not just post-IPO companies. Heck, I am not opposed to a slightly higher tax rate. And then there is choice, the Warren Buffett choice. He decided most of his wealth should not go to his children. It is bad for them. 90% of his wealth will not go to his children.
Two, a stagnant minimum wage is a bad policy choice. The minimum wage in America should be $10 right away, and in the big cities it should be $15. Urbanization is good for the environment. Go green.
Three, trillions sitting around is stupidity. $10 trillion will take care of a-l-l infrastructure needs across the Global South, and that investment will bring a guaranteed 10% annual return. Win-win. Heck, somebody put half a trillion in Elon Musk's internet access company.
But all that is wealth talk. I meant to talk entrepreneurship, especially high tech entrepreneurship. I once put out a blog post where I said, statistically speaking, being an entrepreneur is like being gay. It is about one out of 100. But then that is everyone. That is pizza store owners.
1% of that 1% might be in high tech. And 1% of that 1% of that 1% might be successful tech entrepreneurs. 1 out of 100 which is 1 out of 100 which is 1 out of 100. 1 out of 1,000,000. You are quite literally one in a million. In a country of 300 million, that would give us 300 such entrepreneurs. That is about right. Does this country have 300 self made billionaires? If not, there is something missing in the social/political/economic fabric. Maybe the 1% have too much wealth, maybe the minimum wage has been too stagnant for too long, maybe there are too many trillions just sitting around, having a negative gravity effect on overall growth and well being. Probably all of the above.
1% of 1% of 1%: self made billionaires are in august company.
When you are in the political mindset, you are trying to add your little energy to the larger collective energy which, you hope, is trying to move towards a more perfect union. You look at the large arcs of history.
But in the tech entrepreneurship mindset, you don't have the luxury of time, you have to execute, you have to move, you have to play the hands you are dealt with. I think for the most part it is about innovation and hard work, mostly just innovation. If you can take yourself to the cutting edges of innovation, you will, for the most part, win. If you have the stomach to take the risks, to make the jumps. But you don't really have the privilege of theory, or at least not as much. You don't have the privilege of the monk option, where you choose to live on little to give a larger push to the historic arc towards a more perfect union. You have investors, you have team members, you have customers to please. Money is as good a metric as any. You have to make the moves that make the money. Maybe there is not time to watch a change of heart unravel.
You have to move. For the most part you rely on innovation and hard work and charisma. But there are times when you just have to hit back. You might not be black, or Indian, or female, but maybe you are dumb, and fat, and lazy, and ignorant. And being dumb, you need to be called on it. Or maybe you just have a funny face. How about ugly?
You hit back hard and fast. You sting a quick sting. You take a quick bite. Everybody but everybody is at the receiving end of something or the other. You do that to clear up the deck a little so you can quickly go back to innovation and hard work. Innovation is its own sexy. A relentless push to the cutting edges of innovation allows you to wallow in the high clouds of the post-ISMs individuals. Because, we are relentlessly trying to move towards a meritocracy.
The best ideas could come from anywhere. The talent pool is global. If you don't cast your net wide, you lose.
Even without race and gender issues, tech entrepreneurship is plenty of fights. You have to take down an old building to build a new one in its place. That takedown process can feel like violence to some people. Feelings are going to get hurt. But that is how progress is made. The old has to make way for the new. And the new has colorful faces.
I think being an entrepreneur is like being gay. Scientists say one out of 100 people are born gay. I think it is a similar ratio for entrepreneurs. Only one out of 100 people are entrepreneurs. You can not convince someone to become an entrepreneur, you can not train someone to become an entrepreneur, you can only discover them, help them, support them, aid them, nurture them, nourish them.
We all know New York City is part of the United States. But I think of New York City as a separate country altogether, it is so different from the rest of America, it is so different from even the other big cities in America. There is nothing quite like it.
Entrepreneurs are Homo Sapiens, we know that. But I think of them as a separate species. Entrepreneurs are so different from other people. You can feel it when you interact with them.
There are entrepreneurs, there are serial entrepreneurs and there are SuperEntrepreneurs. A SuperEntrepreneur not only builds a great company, or a set of great, big companies, but also builds a constellation of entrepreneurs around him/her.
It is like there are stars in the universe and then there are SuperStars.
The market value of a company is a good measure of the entrepreneur behind that company.
Image via WikipediaOnly a few months back I got out of my immigration mess/humiliation. The immigration laws in this country are insane. They are racist. They make no logical, economic sense. They make no globalization sense. They make no internet sense. They make no 21st century sense.
I am not even fully out of it yet. But now I got a little bit of a legroom in these United fucking States. This fucking country. Thank God for the internet, or there would be no breathing room.
For a few years now I have gone from tech event to tech event like some guy whose startup never really took off. It has been humiliating to say the least. I know that is not who I am. I am as good as they come.
Image via WikipediaA lot of people have this misconception that people who don't like to have to answer to bosses start their own companies. Entrepreneurs don't have bosses.
Perhaps it is the case that the entrepreneur does not have a boss. What the entrepreneur has is a goddess: the market. As an entrepreneur you have to meet your numbers. As long as you meet your numbers, you are in good shape.
Entrepreneurs do get fired. All the time. The entrepreneur version is to go out of business. The goddess can get mad at you and wipe you out.
There is a reason most people are not entrepreneurs. Someone once said being an entrepreneur is like being gay, it is not like you have a choice. I think there is some truth to that. It is a personality type thing. Some people are just more bent on doing the entrepreneur thing.
During the early stages you are hoping to gain some little traction. You start with the germ of an idea. You try to build a small team. You put together the basic idea for the business. You produce a deck, a few slides. You read up, read up, read up.
You, of course, project success. Big success. But even when you make progress there are times when you fall, there are times when you are moving backwards instead. You try to do it a different way. You tack a little.
It is said we live in an era when people will have not a few different jobs over a lifetime but a few different careers. The one job for life thing went out the window a long time ago. It has been so very true for me.
The immigration humiliation of the past two plus years has been a major blow to self esteem. You show up for enough tech events in town and you leave the impression you are one of those people whose startup never took off. The truth is I am about a year from my green card, and the startup thing will have to wait until then.
What to do has been no minor struggle.
A lot of people who know me think of me as a politician, and I have done some political work, sure, some pretty cutting edge stuff, I would like to believe. But I am who I am. I am a Third World guy. I don't think I have ever seriously contemplated running for office locally. I can get excited about microfinance, but affordable housing? I am not so sure. I am glad plenty get excited about that, and the people are well served, but I am not in that rat race personally.
It is not just a demand issue. It is not just about what the world wants. It is also a supply issue. In politics what excites me is the executive. The US presidency I find fascinating. But I could not say the same about the legislative branch. And that tells me I am cut for tech entrepreneurship. That fits into my personality type. I need much action.
Minus the web I am a fragmented person. I was born in India, grew up in Nepal, now live in America. America is not one country to me. There is the rest of America. And there is New York City. I try to think of New York City as a country on its own. I make a point not to step outside the city boundaries. And I am someone who has been to all parts of America. No one who ran for president of this country has seen as much of America as I have.
Larry Ellison takes his sailing pretty seriously. I take my politics pretty seriously. But I don't see myself in politics. I don't even see me doing the Bloomberg thing. I am perhaps too global. It is a mindset, it is a world view. In my case, it is just who I am.
I set out to raise 100K for my startup in 2008, and I did. I put the bank account in my business partner's name. ("Are you sure you want to trust me with all this money!") The Democratic primary over, I was going to focus on the startup like a laser beam. The McCain thing was not going to be much of a contest. I did not think so.
Back then it was about getting into the ISP space that I had started to call Web 3.0. How do you bring another five billion people online? By now I am much more interested in the mobile web. Looks like the mobile web has already engulfed much of humanity. Well, it is Mini Me for much of the world, but it is a start. Being able to do mobile phone banking is nothing less than revolutionary.
I have yet to buy my first smartphone. I have been pretty much broke during these two plus years of immigration humiliation. But I also look down upon that screen size. The goal has to be big screen wireless broadband for everybody. Third World people are not Mini Me people. And I spend so much time online everyday already that when I am offline I like being offline, untethered. You have to smell the roses, or in the case of New York City, the foul smell of the subway. I think that is also important.
When I do my startup in a year, right now it looks like it is going to be something in the mobile web space. I have a few ideas. I am going to learn some coding in the mean time, enough to lead teams.
In the mean time I will do pro blogging, social media consulting, I have coders who will work for you, I give them their pay and take my cut: let me know if you need some cheap, remote coding done. I am open to getting a job. I am about to put my profile up on a modeling site. I believe I could handle that on the side. I did get a call. I need to call back. I am open to more.
I could use some help with the pro blogging. Every startup worth its salt has a social media presence. This is like outsourcing some of the blogging. You let me do a post or two or three. On your part that would require you giving me an hour or two of your time, in person or on the phone, in person preferred, when you tell me your full story, your full story, and your startup's full story. And by full, I mean full. And you let me talk to the key people on your team. And you email me all the pictures you want to go with the posts. And I would spend hours on the posts. And after the posts come out, you should want to link to them from your site. If you get the full story out, that helps with your hard core users, they feel more included, and become more loyal, and it helps with the press. If they can do all the background research on you with little effort, they are more likely to do stories on you. And more stories the better. Every article written about you is so much free advertising. And it helps with your future investors. I don't have space issues like the mainstream media. I can give as much space to you as needed.
The attraction of the mobile web is that you are working with a pool of five billion people. There has to be an app for that. It is about becoming whole as a person. To me it is. I have a mobile web app in mind that grows to also end up with a big screen web presence. But one year is a long time in tech entrepreneurship. Maybe I will go back to my original idea. Maybe I will set up shop in Queens. But software speaks more to my butterfly effect instincts.
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