A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Age is more a mental state than a physical one.

I’ve always said that smart people say/do stupid things and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla is proof of that.

“People under 35 are the people who make change happen,” said, “People over 45 basically die in terms of new ideas.”

The problem is that the data the tech world is so enamored with doesn’t back that up.

Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke University researcher, worked with the Kauffman Foundation in 2009 to explore the anatomy of a successful startup founder. That survey of more than 500 startups in high-growth industries showed that the average founder of a successful company had launched his or her venture at the surprisingly high age of 40. The study also found that people over 55 are almost twice as likely to launch high-growth startups than those aged 20 to 34.

The term “high growth” is key. 2010′s top two fastest-growing tech startups, according to Forbes, were First Solar, founded by a 68-year old, followed by Riverbed Technology, co-founded by entrepreneurs who were 51 and 33 at the time.

He should also inform the Merage Institute, which awards $100K to the top startup by a 45+-year-old founder (more runner-ups at the link).

• In 2016 it was iSilla – Movement for people with disabilities
• 2nd Prize –  SonicBone – Bone Age – Ultrasound Device for Bone Age assessment
• 3rd Prize – Inensto – Aluminum Air Battery

In 2015 they were:

• 1^st Prize – NiNiSpeech
• 2nd Prize – A new Hydrogen Energy Storage
• 3rd Prize – Glasses for AMD Macular Degeneration

Brian Acton was 37 when he founded WhatsApp.

Notice that all of them solve a real problem — a problem of which they wouldn’t be aware if they hadn’t faced it directly or indirectly themselves.

Which meant they had real world experience.

Even Mark Zukerberg had real world experience; he wanted an easy way to engage and keep up with his friends. Remember, Facebook was originally started for college kids.

The reason Khosla is so far off base, is that an entrepreneur can only disrupt that with which she is familiar enough to figure out a better way or see a hole and fill it.

Hence young males created Tinder and its clones to hookup and Match and its clones for something more permanent.

If you look at socially oriented startups, many of their founders, both young and old, saw the need first hand, while volunteering and/or traveling, came home and created a solution that answered that need.

It’s not a matter of age.

It’s a matter of three things

1. See the need/experience the want/desire what isn’t
2. Think of a way to solve/provide it
3. Possess the drive, tenaciousness, guts and slight insanity required to turn an idea into a reality and a reality into a company

And those three things can happen to anyone at any age.

My thanks to KG for reminding me of how important it is to help smash these myths.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Have you noticed that many of the hot startups from young founders are relatively shallow—focused on sharing pictures and facilitating casual hookups.

Facebook was originally a way for college students to connect with each other campus by campus and Twitter was more a digital gossip line than a vehicle for the likes of Arab Spring.

There’s a simple reason for that—people tend to create solutions for the problems they find in their own lives.

It’s not so much how old you are but your experiences and how you see the world that makes for great entrepreneurs—but more are older than younger.

“The average age of a successful entrepreneur in high-growth industries such as computers, health care, and aerospace is 40. Twice as many successful entrepreneurs are over 50 as under 25. The vast majority — 75 percent — have more than six years of industry experience and half have more than 10 years when they create their startup,” says Duke University scholar Vivek Wadhwa, who studied 549 successful technology ventures. Meanwhile, data from the Kauffman Foundation indicates the highest rate of entrepreneurship in America has shifted to the 55-64 age group, with people over 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than those between 20 and 34.

These are the people who often tackle enterprise and healthcare challenges, because they have been stymied with them in their own work.

Additionally, the larger the worldview the greater the level of empathy leading to substantially more compassion and a stronger desire to “fix it.”

A good example of this is found in Project Daniel.

Project Daniel started in 2012, when Mick Ebeling read a story in Time magazine about Daniel Omar, a then 14-year-old Sudanese boy who lost both his hands from a bomb. It inspired Ebeling to assemble a team capable of creating a low-cost, 3D-printed prosthetic on consumer-grade 3D printers.

Ebeling is the founder of Not Impossible, a company dedicated to “technology for the sake of humanity” which also developed the Eyewriter.

Now you, too, can volunteer with a team, expand your worldview and help change lives, as well as expand your network and have great bragging rights.

YouTube credit: Not Impossible Labs

After the 2010 debut of the film “The Social Network,” which made Mark Zuckerberg and his band of Facebook friends famous: the public became enthralled with technology geeks much as it was with movie stars.

Two years before The Social Network Jesse Draper, great granddaughter of California’s first venture capitalist, created and hosts the Silicon Valley Internet talk show “The Valley Girl Show” where entrepreneurs do stupid stuff in the name of “taking themselves less seriously.”

Considering the media focus on entrepreneurs can a reality show be far behind?

No, but don’t look for substance over form.

Among those is Randi Zuckerberg, Mark’s colorful sister who left Facebook last summer and recently signed on to be an executive producer of a Bravo reality show that will chronicle the hard-partying life of 20-something entrepreneurs.

Many in the Valley aren’t enamored with the idea and with good reason.

Watching anyone think and work on a computer is boring, but creative editing should effectively eliminate the thought, work and effort leaving only the stuff that will cause viewers to shake their heads and adequately feed the media hype machine.

It’s also every inaccurate, since most successful entrepreneurs are not twenty-somethings.

Vivek Wadhwa’s, a Duke University researcher who worked with the Kauffman Foundation, survey of over 500 startups operating in “high-growth industries” showed that the average founder of a successful company launched his or her venture at the surprisingly high age of 40. The study also found that people over 55 are almost twice as likely to launch high-growth startups than those aged 20 to 34.

And gray entrepreneurs outpacing green ones isn’t an isolated trend that’s only occurred in the past few years. “In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34,” says Dane Stangler, a research manager at Kauffman.

Of course, young, good looking, single, articulate folks in their twenties who can talk a great story about their world-changing app over drinks at a cool bar are better TV material than those who labor and then go home to spouse, family and mortgage.

My guess is the show will offer about as much reality as does the Real Housewives franchise.

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Image credit: Bravo TV

Certain subjects have been discussed and debated constantly over the years; today’s links are updates on four of them.

The first looks at the very sensitive subject of job, creation, loss and outsourcing, using Apple as its case study. (You may also find this op-ed companion piece of interest.

“All these new companies — Facebook, Google, Twitter — benefit from this. They grow, but they don’t really need to hire much.” –Jean-Louis Gassée

In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand.”

Then, of course, there is the ongoing debate on the effectiveness of managers; it started around the time the first hunting party organized to go after a wooly mammoth.

“It’s very tough to believe that there are such wide differences in management out there.” –Raffaella Sadun, assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

(Only someone who has never been in the workplace could make that statement with a straight face.)

The list of companies, not to mention executives, that have crashed and burned as a result of their lies is extensive and very public, while the number that are more or less opaque is uncountable. Is there truly a benefit for those that practice candor?

“In fact, the share prices of survey companies in the top quartile of CEO candor outperformed companies in the bottom quartile by 31%. For nine of the past 10 years, top-ranked companies have outperformed bottom-ranked companies on average by 18%.”

Finally, a disturbing look at the meritocracy called Silicon Valley.

“Silicon Valley is indeed a meritocracy for those to whom these criteria are not hurdles. But others—the blacks, women, and Hispanics whom it overlooks—find it an elite private club from which they are excluded.” –Vivek Wadhwa

(Hat tip to Emanio CEO KG Charles-Harris for sending this to me.)

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

Image credit: arkitekt

Do you sometimes get the impression that, like the garage of “olden” times, the college dorm room is where most startups start? That founders are dominantly twenty-somethings, many who skipped or quit college, who got some friends together and grabbed the brass ring?

Even more hilariously, do you believe that startups are a by-product of the Internet, as has been frequently explained over the last 15 years to me by younger, more nimble minds?

You may if you go by the media, since even old media focuses obsessively on young entrepreneurs doing wild things on the Net from their dorm rooms.

Not so.

“…a new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and researchers at Duke and Harvard universities reveals most U.S.-born technology and engineering company founders are middle-aged, well-educated, and hold degrees from a wide assortment of universities.”

I found this information at Dobbs Code Talk where Jon Erickson’s great post highlights key points in the study (note that the focus is US-born founders of engineering and tech companies), the first two being that

• twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their 50s as do those in their early 20s.

• elite, highly ranked schools are over-represented in the ranks of these founders, and Ivy-League graduates achieve the greatest business success; however, 92 percent of U.S.-born founders graduate from other universities.

According to Vivek Wadhwa, the study’s lead researcher and a Wertheim fellow with the Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University,

“While education clearly is an advantage for tech founders in the United States, experience also is a key factor.”

Click on over to read more and for a link to the actual report, you’ll find both interesting reading.