I have this ongoing conversation with a business partner about the ideal age of becoming an entrepreneur. Well, since the post has been published today, I think, it’s time for sharing my views. (You can read it by clicking here: http://bit.ly/Mt3J6c (It’s in Hungarian though.))

Basically the post was pointing out 3 different things:

1. “It’s always easier to sell offline than online.”
2. “Age is not an excuse”
3. “Marketing is a make or break”

Here’s my answer:

1. True
2. True
3. True

Wait, what? Well, let’s look at this topic a bit deeper:

1. Offline sales

When you neither have a validated channel to reach your customers, nor a proper budget to work it out, you have to options: hack the system or hack your customers.

I like to prefer the latter one. 1:1 sales in the very beginning is so valuable that it simply cannot be measured. Yesterday I had a phone call with a trial customer, and in 10 minutes we found a value proposition that works (for him!). The results: deep, valuable insights on how to proceed, a new paying customer, and actually tons of referrals (he referred us to 3 of his colleagues, which ended up in 4 new customers in 10 minutes). I believe that THIS is what every startup needs at customer discovery stage.

2. Age is not an excuse

No it’s not. It’s a two-sided blade, just look at fellow Y-gen guys here in Budapest:

1. “I’m young, it’s okay to make mistakes.”
2. “I’m young, so I’m more creative.”

Yeah, it’s okay to make mistakes, but not because you’re young. And you can be more creative, but not because you’re young. Stop this shit. I’m 23 and I find this offensive from the members my generation.

I agree with Agnes, that I cannot argue with statistics. Most of successful entrepreneurs are way older than me or my colleagues.

But here’s the thing: The younger you are, the faster you learn.

This is my argument. It’s okay to fail, hell, probably I’ll be around 30 when I finally achieve my first huge success. But the younger you start, the faster you learn, and you know what they say: fail fast, fail often.

I think this is the hidden power of the Ygen. But there’s also a great obstacle that prevents us from achieving great things: ourselves. It’s a natural phenomenon that young adults (18-26) think they’re the center of the world.

So full of themselves. I know, I’ve been there. Sometimes I’m still there, and get the punches, and it hurts, and it’s good. Because when that pain tells me to stop doing what I’m doing, and be better.

3. Marketing is a make or break

I’ve been working in marketing and sales for more than 5 years now. Of course it is.