Startups for Seniors: Entrepreneuring at 55+

crisisIn the middle of your life you find yourself in the process of reinventing who you are or what you do. Maybe both. What a great opportunity!

This page is just an introduction. More help lies in Silver-haired Head Start and Relaunch Yourself.

I use the term startups for grownups, but such veterans are also referred to as 'senior entrepreneurs', 'third-age entrepreneurs', 'elder entrepreneurs', 'gray' or 'silver' entrepreneurs. and 'second-career entrepreneurs'.

The impetus to change may come from within yourself or from an outside stimulus. You are not going to turn into something you are not. But you surely know a person who has made such a change and have made the comment, "You are so different these days!" I do. And I know many who say of themselves, "I feel so much younger!" as a result of the process.

Examples of the inner push to self-reinvention are

  • you are fed up with a soul destroying job;
  • you are questioning what is important in life;
  • you contemplate an empty nest;
  • you are newly on your own;
  • you are restless.

Examples of the outside circumstance

  • your job has ended;
  • your partner has relocated;
  • the skill you have used is no longer needed;
  • you retired early;
  • you need to supplement social security/pension.

The great opportunity you have is to reinvent yourself. You can be different or do something different.

Senior advantages... and risks

Seniors doing startups have advantages including:

  • industry credibility and a track record in business;
  • confidence in proven abilities and are usually more effective leaders;
  • established credit and personal resources making easier capital raising;
  • computers have made it much easier to operate a home-based business.

There are some higher risks for gray entrepreneurs as well:

  • health questions;
  • recovering from failure may be more difficult;
  • the free-time anticipated in retirement may disappear;
  • alternative arm's length investments may be preferable.

If you want some help before you leave your job, try the Nolo information on Retire—And Start Your Own Business: Five Steps to Success.

For really god advice and support for seniors who want to work, whether one their own or for someone else, an excellent place to seek help is Savvy Senior Work—a blog by Elizabeth Isele, a Maine-based socioal entrepreneur who knows what it takes. Go and take a look if you are over 60. You will not regret a visit to a person full of fun and knowledge.

You may also like to know that the author of this website is in his seventies and aims at working another 10-15 years or so. So if you would like any help in this field, I may be someone you would like to talk with. A former colleague wrote to me not long ago and commented, "marvelous to hear how you keep reinventing yourself... you are an inspiration to us all."

Contrary to popularly held assumptions, it turns out that over the past decade or so, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belongs to the 55-64 age group. The 20-34 age bracket, meanwhile, which we usually
identify with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google), has the lowest rate. Perhaps most surprising, this disparity occurred during the eleven years surrounding the dot-com boom—when the young entrepreneurial upstart became a cultural icon. In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34. For the entire period, the 55-64 group averaged a rate of entrepreneurial activity roughly one-third larger than their youngest counterparts. This is reported in The Coming Entrepreneurship Boom, a June 2009 report from the Kauffman Foundation.

Now go into a bit more depth and detail at Silver-haired Head Start and Relaunch Yourself.

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Iris Lines, LLC