The shelf · Ageing alone
Does Never Too Old to Get Rich hold up?
Never Too Old to Get Rich: The Entrepreneur's Guide to Starting a Business Mid-Life, by Kerry Hannon (2019)
A guide to starting a business after 50 as a source of income in later life.
The short answer
Partly. The research on older founders holds for the fastest-growing firms, and its count of new 65-year-olds is now too low.
The claims, checked
A 50-year-old founder is 1.8 times as likely as a 30-year-old to build a top-growth firm.
Holds with conditions Matches Azoulay, Jones, Kim and Miranda, American Economic Review: Insights (2020), for the fastest-growing US firms; it does not show that later-life businesses in general do best.
Evidence: Next Avenue, on Azoulay et al.
Ten thousand Americans turn 65 every day.
Outdated The pace is now higher: about 11,200 a day from 2024 to 2027.
Evidence: AARP, 2023