Last night I was reading an article on TechCrunch called When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule which was saying that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40. The article argued that one one reason the failure rates of VC firms are so high is that they concentrate on 20-something entrepreneurs.

It really got me thinking as a lot of publicity is given to young guys, fresh out of school who go on a create successful businesses. I am sure that this does happen but like anything else becoming an expert at business and entrepreneurship takes time, dedication and focus. In his book “The Outliers” Malcolm Gladwell says: “The best way to achieve international stardom is to spend 10,000 hours honing your skills”. Now to clock up 10,000 hours of experience takes many years and is not something you can fast track in a few months.

I started my first company when I was in my early 20s and I cringe at some of the decisions I made and the methods I used. For example in my first company I spent about 6 months building a financial services wealth tool that was well ahead of its time. I worked day and night programming, building and refining the tool. When I thought the tool was perfect and ready to show the world I realised that your product is actually only a very small piece of the business. The most important thing for a start-up is marketing, buzz, distribution channels, partnerships; I had worked on none of those during my frantic product development, so that put me back another 6 months.

Every business I have started or run I have learned from the previous experiences and as a result I get better, more experienced and hopefully more successful each time. Like anything the more you practice and learn the better you get. Experience counts for a lot in business.