Dear SaaStr: Is it Wise for Someone at 40+ to Think of Quitting Their Job and Becoming an Entrepreneur? - The Entrepreneurial Way with A.I.

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Saturday, June 29, 2024

Dear SaaStr: Is it Wise for Someone at 40+ to Think of Quitting Their Job and Becoming an Entrepreneur?

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Dear SaaStr: Is it Wise for Someone at 40+ to Think of Quitting Their Job and Becoming an Entrepreneur?

Age doesn’t matter — per se. You’re not “too old” to do a start-up until you think you are and feel you are. And in B2B SaaS, the domain expertise and experience that come with more years in the field does help a ton.

The average age for SaaS companies that have IPO’d is 32, and that’s the average.   Peter Gassner was 42 when he founded $30B+ Veeva, Eric Yuan was 41 when he founded, Zoom, etc.  And both really benefitted from their domain expertise.  Peter had already been a CTO at Salesforce working in part on the same vertical, and Eric led engineering at WebEx.  Therese Tucker founded Blackline at 40 as a solo founder (that story below in a great interview).

The Average SaaS CEO is 43 at IPO (Updated)

But your personal burn rate does matter.  And these days, many of us of all ages are just too burnt out. 

One thing I do know: if you are going to do a SaaS start-up for real, you have to budget 24 months just to get it off the ground. To get to Initial Traction:

  • This is easier if your “personal burn rate” is close to $0.
  • It’s also easier if you have angel investors already lined up to put in say the first $500k.
  • It’s also easier if you have savings and are crazy enough to burn through them to fund the business for 24+ months.

So the young, those without mortgages and kids and schools and minivans and the like, generally have a personal burn rate advantage. If you can live on ramen and sleep on a futon for 24+ months, all other things being equal, that does give you an edge if there is little-to-no funding available.

The seasoned have other advantages, though.

Just make sure you budget 24 months to get it Off the Ground, with a $0 salary.

Budget less, and at least in b2b/SaaS, it’s not enough. You almost certainly won’t get far enough to build a sustaining SaaS business.

And it’s always difficult. It’s never easy to build something real, from nothing.

The post Dear SaaStr: Is it Wise for Someone at 40+ to Think of Quitting Their Job and Becoming an Entrepreneur? appeared first on SaaStr.





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Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow