12 reasons why grey hairs must do Startups!
“Opportunities you never took” fall into two categories: (a) The ones you missed and (b) the ones you didn’t even know existed. If you are in your late 40s or older (i.e. GenX or Boomer), and if you have never been part of a fast-scaling startup, then…
isn’t true that the thoughts of your doing a startup hasn’t even crossed your mind!?
Or, are you one of those people who wanted to do a startup, but thought it was only for the twenty somethings? Perhaps, you wanted to do a startup, but didn’t know whom to ask?
Then the “Grey Hair Startups” is for you
Why should you do a Startup
Here are some compelling reasons for you to become a startup entrepreneur
1. More people the merrier
Wealth is a product of human creativity. When more humans, like yourself, come up with new ways of creating wealth, everyone benefits. If you become a successful startup entrepreneur and end up making (x)millions, it implies that you added (x+y)millions in value to the society at large. The world will become a richer place because of you.
2. More entrepreneurs beget even more entrepreneurs
Entrepreneurs create ideas, ideas create opportunities, opportunities create entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs create ideas…you get the point. When you become an entrepreneur, even if you fail and destroy wealth, you will leave the world a better place because someone is going to start off from where you leave off.
3. You are wiser than a 20 something
You have been there, done that. Most of the 20 something tech entrepreneurs I meet don’t understand much outside their core area. Even their project or process management often leave much to be desired. If they go head to head with a seasoned competitor like you, they will be vaporized.
4. Your ideas are are better buttressed
Tech startups take up a small sliver of ideas, usually the smallest possible ones, and build a business on them. This has several advantages:
- When the founders have next-to-nothing business experience, it is best to keep the moving parts to the minimum
- You can build a minimum viable product (MVP) very quickly
- You can build a decent traction quickly enough
- When you build a product/service around a single idea, it is easy to find a buyer for it (who would then integrate it into the bigger picture)
- If things don’t work, the ventures fail-small-and-fail-fast
But with your 20 or 40 years of industry experience, you can stitch a beautiful tapestry of a product/solution. Because you have lived enough to wander the whole forest, you can imagine and create a an entire ecosystem and the interactions between each part of it to every other part of it.
Your ideas are likely to be more robust and better buttressed than the one trick ponies that get funded.
5. Your idea can be large
Because you have wandered the whole forest, you can come up with ideas with much wider footprint than someone in their twenties or thirties. However, in reality, most of you can’t come up with large ideas primarily because you have never worked for an exponential organization and you don’t know how they work.
But you can learn it in a couple of hours. When you do, you can effortlessly think up multi-million ideas.
6. Your can quickly build a large organization
Because of your industry experience, it will be lot easier for you to quickly build larger organizations, that spread into various geographies. You are likely to have a network of experience professionals across geographies and verticals, who can help you spawn a seedling in other part of the world practically overnight.
Many from your social circle may already be managing teams that are thousands of people strong. You can lean on all of them to build a larger organization than an young entrepreneur.
7. You can come up with non-tech business ideas
Someone has to do non-tech innovations, right? Because you spent your life in some non-tech vertical, you will intuitively know of multi-million dollar opportunities sitting right at your backyard, that the VC Gods of the Valley haven’t even heard about!
8. You can reach sales numbers faster
Again, because you have done this before, also because of your pre-existing network, you can reach larger sales number more quickly. Of course, you may not be proficient with digital marketing techniques. But at least during the initial days, digital marketing techniques can be bought off the market.
More importantly, digital marketing will take months to yield results. In the meanwhile, during the initial months, your conventional traction building techniques are going help you in producing quick results.
9. You can build your business in you own hometown
Because you have been around for several years now, it will be easier for you to find investors (and B2B customers, if relevant) wherever you live. You won’t have to migrate to another city just to get some attention from the investors or large customers. Of course, this is not always true. But it works in many cases.
10. Your productivity will likely improve
Because a startup is much more demanding on you, you will see your much more productive than you used to be. If you are proactive, you may become more physically fit in order to get additional productivity squeeze. The dare devils among you may even biohack yourself in order to reach never-before performance levels.
11. You will live longer
If you wisely choose to improve your health and fitness, or get into judicial biohacking, you will now live longer than you would have otherwise. Since health is contagious, even your closest social connections (significant other, children, etc.) will end up getting a health boost.
12. You will make more money. Much more money.
I have seen many startups doing a two to three years’ exist at $100m to $200m valuation. With just few rounds of fund-raise, and two to three founders, each one comes away with $20m to $40m nest bed for three years of managing ambiguity. Unless you have been phenomenally successful in your current avatar, one successful exit will make more money for you than you have accumulated in all preceding years.
If you can think of other reasons why a GenXer or Baby Boomer must do a startup, please write them down in the comments section below.
In the next post, let’s see what why grey hairs don’t do startups as often as they must.
