I've heard many times that "You're never too old," but it's often obscured by frequently hearing about teenagers and college kids making a fortune with their start-ups (started coding when they were 9, etc.). What about people who've past these stages in their life? Any motivating success stories?
I know several people that only really made it big when they were in their 50's. I think for the most part those are relatively conservative businesses, not billion dollar affair from 'winner takes all' bets, but simply identifying a niche, building a product and then selling the hell out of it. (and with not billions I mean earning several million annually before taxes, which I think is pretty good by any standard).<p>The businesses that you start when you're 20-30, 30-40 or 40-50 in many ways reflect the amount of energy and the knowledge that you've gathered over the years.
Sam Walton started Walmart when he was 44.<p>Harland Sanders started Kentucky Fried Chicken when he was 61.<p>Sakichi Toyoda started Toyota when he was 59.<p>It's not really rare at all to start successful companies when you're older. Just go look at the history of big companies and you'll find plenty of examples.
My experience says that the teenage and college success stories are the outliers. But, they make for good press, just like a plane crash is more sensational than than 5000 individual daily car crashes (I just made the 5000 number up, but you get the point).<p>Too old would be 1 day before death, but you never know when that will be, so you might as well get started.
Teenagers and college kids making a fortune is newsworthy. People making a fortune during their prime earning years isn't. You don't have a real question. You're too old to start a company when you're you're too old to work a full-time day.
Availability heuristic and confirmation bias. It's not big news when someone who's 51 strikes it rich, but it's unusual when someone 21 does. So that what gets reported and that's what comes to mind when you think of starting a company. If you looked at the news you'd think everyone who's rich got there by starting a hot startup in college (or got a big Wall Street bonus), but it ain't necessarily so. Take a look at books like "Millionaire Next Door" for some more balanced info on the kinds of companies people start and what age they become wealthy.
I think it's much more about "when do you have too much responsibility to risk crashing and burning?" rather than just "how old"? A 22 year old with a wife and kid and mortgage and student debt is probably less able to focus and take chances than a cashed up 50 year old without those responsibilities.