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The two big startup killers are when there’s just no market for what you are doing, and team problems. – David Cohen
Most ventures fail.
Many people think that successful founders are young – they’re the ones that are smart, know new technology, don’t have commitments, can outwork the competition and can think outside the box.
It turns out, however, that older founders are more likely to be successful. A 50-year old founder is nearly twice as likely to create a higher growth firm than a 30-year old.
This is good news for those of us that are growing irritatingly older.
People often think that what matters in a business is getting to product-market fit.
You have a great idea – perhaps it’s a new app that helps you manage your aquarium.
The next step is to build the app.
Then it’s time to go and find paying users.
This is the way we often do things when we’re young.
I remember building all kinds of tools that I thought would be immensely useful.
But somehow no one else wanted to use them, and they never got the traction I thought they might get.
As you get older you realise that you need to think about the problem in reverse – what you need is market-product fit.
Go and find a need – something people want that they’re not getting now – something they would pay for, preferably a lot.
Then build a product that fits that need.
Now, you might argue that if it were that easy surely everyone would be doing it.
Well, think about this for a minute.
Who is your competition?
On the one hand, you have young founders who don’t know what they are doing yet and are busy building rather than looking at the same market need that you’ve discovered.
On the other hand there are large companies that could meet that need – once they’ve got the budget approval, nod from legal, IT setup – all the things that hobble you in a big, rich enterprise from moving quickly.
You could build your product in the time the large enterprise gets its first white paper in front of a VP.
A low risk strategy for a founder, especially an older one, is perhaps as follows.
- Go and talk to the market. Find a need that you can fill.
- Build a solution and get early customers.
- Iterate and build until you have something that delights your small customer base.
- Grow quickly, hire and build a team that can support your service.
- Put yourself up for sale – look for a large company that wants what you have and will acquire the lot.
This is a 3-5 year plan, and then if you have time, rinse and repeat.
So, if you’re on the wrong side of 40, your best years are still ahead of you.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
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