[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!