Challenges of Starting Up after 40

Most people in the startup ecosystem (and even others) think that people under 35 are the ones who innovate while people over 45 don’t really have much to contribute in terms of new ideas. But do people stop being creative as they reach middle age?…

Well, if you come to think of it, Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod when he was 44. Henry Ford introduced the Model T when he was 45. Sam Walton built Walmart in his mid-40s. McDonald’s was built by Ray Kroc in his early 50s. Even in the field of creativity, Ray Kurzweil published ‘The Singularity Is Near’ in his 50s, Alfred Hitchcock directed Vertigo when he was 59, Frank Lloyd Wright built his architectural masterpiece, Fallingwater, when he was 68. Beethoven created his one of the most popular works, Symphony No. 9, when he was almost deaf and at the age of 53, just three years before he died. Need I say more!

However, here in India we have a different issue. There is a tremendous investor bias against mature founders . VCs prefer startups founded by young millennials. There could be many reasons for that. Startups require one to invest long hours and investors may feel that with all those social obligations and supposedly dwindling health, those over 50 may not be able to put in that kind of hard work. At the same time, others may feel threatened by the fact that they cannot manipulate you into signing a term sheet, which guarantees that while you slog, they’ll reap the benefits.

Whatever their reasons, the fact that can’t be ignored is that there is a huge bias towards funding startups whose founders have crossed the 40+ age bracket. But don’t lose hope. If your conviction is strong, nothing can stop you from achieving your dreams. Remember, even Steve Jobs, known to be the greatest innovator of recent times, gave shape to his most significant innovations – iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and iPad – after he was 45.

(taken from http://inc42.com/entrepreneurship/challenges-of-being-an-entrepreneur-at-50)

Be Clear & Upfront!

An entrepreneur must remember to be upfront about everything, be it discussing stakes with co-founders, sharing of responsibilities amongst the team, highlighting mistakes and weaknesses of different members of the team, discussions with investors and contracting with them, setting emoluments of employees etc. A lot of the time, especially in the case of first time founders, things tend to be unclear and hazy which eventually leads to disagreements and conflict.

Evernote's 5% problem!

Evernote is a platform for note taking, collaborating and archiving. It had shown amazing growth and had joined the list of unicorns with a billion dollar valuation. It seemed to be loved by users and the user engagement levels were really good. The team kept on adding new features to attract newer users and also in a bid to increase engagement further of its existing users.

This is where the problem started arising. Over time on surveying various users, the team at Evernote realised that most users were using only 5% of the total features the app had to offer. And the dilemma was that this 5% varied from user to user. No significant majority of users was using the app in a particular way and hence the core offering of the app was getting diluted. Now the team is working on reinventing the startup and building a core and clear offering which can make the business sustainable and lasting.

The problem arises when a lot of startups begin to scale and in a bid to attract new users, a lot of them begin adding features and enhancements which might not enhance value and might be vaguely correlated to the core product/service. This tends to affect the momentum of the business and has a tendency to destroy value in the longer term.