[staticelf]

Personally I think the ideas you have when you are 20 and the ideas you have when you are 40 are probably going to differ a lot. Since starting a business is about doing something in the real world that is going to make money I am not surprised to see that there is more older entrepreneurs than one might expect.

The ideas you have when you are 20 are often more idealist and not necessarily connected to reality as much as the ideas of a 40-year-old. This is coming from a guy that has some years to go before 30.

[justherefortart]

I'm 44. Ideas are a dime a dozen (if you can come up with them). The hardest part is the implementation and having necessary capital.

Comparing today to the mid 90s when I was doing my first college startup, capital is relatively easy to come by and the expenses for setting up servers/hosting are pennies on the dollar.

My issue in my 20s was not knowing how to get into businesses and provide them tools they needed. I also ignored all the .com boom type stuff because I was (sadly) too grounded in revenue.

Most ideas aren't unique, novel, or even new. It's how you deliver and the service/services you provide. If you're benefiting people in some way, they'll come running.

[dbrueck]

Amen to this. And even if an idea is unique, novel, or new, it can immediately be copied by just about anyone, so there's typically not a lot of enduring competitive advantage in just an idea.

I'm in my 40s and have started a handful of successful companies and from what I've seen at least, the miracle 20-something entrepreneur is close to a myth. Obviously there are exceptional cases, but it often takes a couple of decades of learning (and failing) to figure out how to create and grow a successful business.

Part of it is because there are many different stages of growing a business, and each one has unique challenges. You go from "we built something sellable!" to "we have paying customers!" to "we are self-sufficient!" to "we are expanding our market share!" to "we are trying not to slow our innovation!" to "we are under attack from the competition!" and so on.

A pretty solid idea + excellent execution + real business model = really good odds of success.

[gbacon]

Execute, execute, execute!