The trend: Older startup founders
Look beyond the wunderkinds and more than a third of Australia’s startup founders are older than 50, writes Sangeeta Kocharekar.
“Invisible.” It’s the word Anne Miles says best describes her experience as an older employee. At 21, Miles was head of TV at a multinational ad agency and running $20 million worth of production annually. Fast-forward 30 years and “I would raise substantial issues in a meeting,” she says, “and my boss would stare at my face, see the words come out of my mouth, then turn to the room of 20 people and pretend it never happened.”
Though Miles thinks gender bias played a role, she believes a larger reason was her grey hair. She felt she had no choice but to start her own company and in 2018 launched a global marketing and advertising agency, now known as Suits&Sneakers.
Miles, 55, isn’t alone in starting a business at an age not far from when many begin to dip into their super funds. A recent study found 34 per cent of all Australian entrepreneurs are older than 50 and those roughly 380,000 mature entrepreneurs are the fastest growing sector of business founders in the country, contributing $11.9 billion per annum to the economy.
“It’s because of the baby boomers,” says Alex Maritz of La Trobe Business School, pointing to that affluent generation now aged 55 to 75.
Maritz, who spent four years studying and talking to thousands of entrepreneurs over 50, says ageism in the workforce is just one motivator. Supplemental income, flexible working hours, the opportunities associated with active ageing and pursuing a passion are others.
Maritz’s research found one in three mature entrepreneurs have multiple startups, are surprisingly tech savvy and, unsurprisingly, prefer the term “mature” entrepreneur to “senior”.
The group’s main challenges are lack of information, declining health and insufficient support, he says. “There’s a lot more support for youth entrepreneurship and no significant startup ecosystem for older entrepreneurs. It’s assumed they should know all this stuff already. That’s not always the case.”
On the flip side, however, the advantages of mature entrepreneurship are great. When the United States Census Bureau and Massachusetts Institute of Technology looked at 2.7 million founders who had launched companies in America between 2007 and 2014, their research showed a 50-year-old founder was 1.8 times more likely than a 30-year-old founder to create a high-growth firm. (Founders in their early 20s had the lowest likelihood of building a top-growth business.)
Martin Moore, 57, believes life experience sets his leadership development business, Your CEO Mentor, apart. “Many coaches have read the books but they haven’t actually had to push their way through it,” he says.
As for Anne Miles, these days she’s far from invisible. In 2018, she was a winner in Westpac’s 200 Businesses of Tomorrow awards and, in 2019, a finalist in the entrepreneur category of the B&T Women in Media Awards.
Her small business competes with big agencies not unlike the companies she once worked for. “I was too old and experienced to fit in and now I’ve just gone against them. I’m excelling because I’m an alternative.”