Tech sector's youth bias is fake – best entrepreneurs are 45+
A study from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management has confirmed what anyone older than 45 knows: they've still got chops and in their prime to make smarter business decisions. Kellogg, MIT and the US Census Bureau crunched a massive dataset and found populist views around the best tech entrepreneurs being super young are entirely wrong, despite Mark Zuckerberg's proclamation in 2007 that "young people are just smarter". The research paper Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship states:
- The best entrepreneurs tend to be middle-aged.
- For the fastest-growing new tech companies, the average founder was 45 at the time they started the business.
- A 50-year-old entrepreneur is nearly twice as likely to have a 'runaway success' as a 30 year-old.
- "The longer you’ve been around, the better your odds," says Benjamin Jones, a professor of strategy at the Kellogg Business School.
Marketing, media and adland are as guilty as tech on the age front. These sectors are notoriously biased to the young. Marketing, media and advertising ageism is even more pronounced for women. There's a decent argument that much of it is driven by price, particularly on the agency side. Younger people are typically cheaper people. But there's more to it. The edge is often with new generations but the spending power and a little wisdom comes later (exceptions always). It's been an ongoing debate for eons but if we're deep into data, this tech myth-buster should shake-up some stereotypes across marketing, media and agencies too.
