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by ackbar03 2168 days ago
Your time-line is remarkably similar to what I've experienced, I also quit my finance job to start a business with a co-founder in 2018 at the age 26. It's also an online product but quite different so it's hard to draw additional parralels but I can totally appreciate your up and downs along the way. It kind of sucks sometimes but for me it's also why I did this in the first place, so I don't look back in my mid thirties with kids and a mortgage and wished I'd did something more with my life when I still had that flame in me. Best of luck! However it turns out at least you took your shot when you had the chance, sometimes that's all that matters
1 comments

> I also quit my finance job to start a business with a co-founder in 2018 at the age 26. It's also an online product but quite different so it's hard to draw additional parralels but I can totally appreciate your up and downs along the way. It kind of sucks sometimes but for me it's also why I did this in the first place, so I don't look back in my mid thirties with kids and a mortgage and wished I'd did something more with my life when I still had that flame in me

I'm not sure why people feel like they needs to make something in their early years before marriage/kids.

a lot of company started by people in their middle age because they spend their early years working in an industry, build up the knowledge and solved some of the problem they experienced.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/tech-start-up-fo...

Appetite for risk and energy both decrease with age.
Middle aged founders are the norm and more likely to take risks because they have financial backing and experience. They're also going to have been exposed to genuine opportunity, instead of a resume builder a college grad might think was a clever idea, and anyone else thinks is kind of a waste of time, as evidenced by the comments here.

It's always been the case, it always will be the case.

With the briefest of Googles you can even find out that's true even in the high-growth tech space:

https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

I think there's selection bias for success stories of both young and middle aged founders. For middle aged founders, I feel like the ones that you hear about, i.e. having worked in the industry for a number of years before spotting a good opportunity, also need to be fortunate enough to be in a position for all those things to line up as well. For me, I couldn't see that ever happening down my career if I stayed in my finance job, only being shackled to my job by the high pay. The opportunity cost of quitting gets worse as you become more senior. But who knows, I could be wrong. In my case it also made it easier that I didn't really like my job and that my boss was an idiot.
If you actually pay attention, you will see opportunity everywhere at your job.

Even if it's just copying your employer.