Why Experience Beats Youth When It Comes to Starting a Business
Plus: Small Ways to Do Big Things
Welcome to this week’s issue of Further, a newsletter for people in their 50s and 60s looking for a more satisfying alternative to the mythical “golden years” retirement.
If you’re here and haven’t yet subscribed, join 19,000+ people looking to live their best life at midlife.
As a Further reader, you know the truth by now.
The most successful business founders aren't fresh-faced kids with nothing to lose.
They're experienced professionals with decades of industry knowledge and hard-earned wisdom.
And now we’ve got both data and investment dollars backing up this reality.
When a team of economists from institutions including MIT and the University of Pennsylvania analyzed millions of American startups, they discovered something remarkable.
As Ben Cohen recently reported in The Wall Street Journal, that research concludes that "the highest success rates in entrepreneurship come from founders in middle age and beyond."
This shouldn't surprise us.
By midlife, we've built the three critical assets that dramatically increase our chances of success:
Deep industry knowledge
Extensive professional networks, and
Financial stability to take calculated risks.
Now, some venture capitalists are recognizing this untapped opportunity.
Take Katerina Stroponiati, who's launched a fund specifically targeting founders over 50. She's betting on entrepreneurs like Bridget Johns, who at 51 left her executive position to launch an AI-powered e-commerce platform.
"The idea comes from having domain expertise, which I wouldn't have had when I was 25," Johns told Cohen. "At 25, I had lots of other ideas for companies—but nothing that was so specific or deep within a niche."
Efficiency and effectiveness often matter more than raw hours worked, negating the most toxic aspects of hustle culture.
Decades of professional experience teach you:
Which problems are actually worth solving
How to navigate industry relationships
When to push forward and when to pivot
Where to find hidden opportunities others miss
Plus, starting a business in your 50s or 60s isn't just about creating another revenue stream.
It's about leveraging your expertise into location-independent income that can fund the next chapter of an amazing life.
Keep going-
P.S. New to Further? Join us here.
The Best of Baja
While everyone knows about Los Cabos at the tip of Baja Sur, Mexico, the hot spot for the last five years has been up the Pacific coast. Todos Santos, El Pecsadero, and Cerritos Beach offer a very different vibe compared with bustling Cabo, and maybe it's exactly what you're looking for.
Discover Todos Santos, Cerritos Beach, and El Pescadero in Baja Sur, Mexico
The Danger of Playing Catch Up
I constantly see financial advisors say it's not too later for someone in their mid-50s to "catch up" on retirement savings. But that would mean an aggressive strategy involving the stock market. Beyond the risk of another market crash, financial professionals are projecting that the market may be flat for the next decade, which leaves you pretty much where you are now.
The Risk in Trying to “Catch Up” Your Retirement Savings
Small Ways to Do Big Things
By Trudi Roth
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about an ancient Chinese adage:
“May you live in interesting times.”
Is this a blessing or a curse? Debatable, and I’d say it’s a little bit of both.
Nowadays, with the dissolution of old systems thanks to everything from politics to AI, we’re definitely living in interesting times. Here at Further, we try to look on the bright side of life (always!) — not through a toxic positivity lens but with clear-eyed acceptance and a focus on spotting opportunities as seismic shifts shake them out. (You’ve been following Brian’s Unretirement series, right?)
All good in theory, but summoning motivation can be challenging when things are unknown, unclear, and unnerving. Time to take a big step back to gain a little perspective to help you move forward.
Daily Durability
It’s no secret that you need to summon inner strength to make changes, evolve, and grow, but the level of fearlessness seemingly required can derail you before you dive in. So, start with a simple reframe courtesy of Robyne Hanley-Dafoe, psychologist and author of Calm Within the Storm: A Pathway to Everyday Resiliency:
Instead of thinking of resiliency as getting stronger, tougher, grittier, or being less impacted by emotions and experiences, my invitation is for you to think about resiliency as being able to be okay.
Things like having a sense of humor, a person or community you can count on, a dash of hope, and a touch of acceptance form the backbone of everyday resilience.
Similarly, Buddhist teacher Leo Babauta simplifies the other thing you need when getting up the gumption to make a change: energy.
“Lower the bar to getting started — make it super easy. You just need to put your shoes on, you don’t need to run 3 miles.”
In other words, the best way forward, even for adults who’ve been around a half-century or more, is baby steps.
Okay is the Way
To our Western minds, being “just okay” with something usually isn’t good enough. But from an Eastern standpoint, it’s the perfect path. For example, the self-transcending meditation practice I teach defines bliss as a place where nothing needs to change for everything to be alright.
Not only does that perspective make happiness attainable, but it also ensures you can do hard things. Motivation becomes less about making big, bold moves and more about simply staying present to what’s possible, as Babauta explains:
When we let ourselves feel a big Possibility, we immediately feel an equal amount of Fear. They coexist equally. Most people then shut down the Possibility so they don’t have to feel the Fear. But that’s a life unfulfilled.
Embracing in equal measure things that light you up and also scare you is the only way to progress. Navigating that path with everyday resilience is what makes life truly interesting.
The Physics of Motivating Yourself (Zen Habits)
The Five Pillars of Everyday Resiliency (Psychology Today)
further: flashback
🎶 Duran Duran - A View To A Kill, A View To A Kill Soundtrack, 1985 🎶
Legend has it that lifelong James Bond fan John Taylor approached producer Cubby Broccoli at a party and drunkenly asked if Duran Duran could write a Bond theme. Broccoli agreed, and A View to a Kill became the first and only 007 song to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. (YouTube)
further: sharing
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