How Entrepreneurs Over 50 Are Turning Age Into an Asset

The last third of life is no longer seen as a time to sit on the porch in a rocking chair but as an opportunity to innovate. And that’s good for everyone, Halvorsen points out. “Self-employed people do work longer, and that means they’re paying taxes longer and they’re bolstering our country’s finances for longer,” he says.

For entrepreneurs, young or old, the goal is to find an idea that solves a problem,   , Pollock says. He compares finding this idea to dating: You have to meet a lot of people and try a lot of relationships before you find one that works.

This is where decades of long workweeks immersed in an industry’s day-to-day details, leading teams and surviving market downturns can pay off. 

“You’ve been a surgeon, you’ve been a lawyer, you’ve worked in manufacturing, you do logistics,” Jones says. “You start to see the kinds of problems that are out there that need to be solved. And that’s going to spark creative entrepreneurial ideas … and … valuable new companies.” 

Co-founders Jim Pollack, left, and Zoya Popovic, third from left, with the LumenAstra team in Boulder, Colorado.

Matt Nager

Pollock started working at Hewlett-Packard developing scientific software after graduating from MIT. Four years later, he left to launch his first company with four colleagues and discovered his love of taking an idea “from zero to something,” Pollock says. After starting seven companies over the decades and earning a reputation for spotting market potential, he was intrigued by University of Colorado engineering professor Zoya Popovic’s research on using microwaves to measure brain temperature. Pollock launched LumenAstra, along with Popovic, in 2019 at age 65. 

The technology addresses a problem the medical community has struggled with for decades: During a stroke or heart bypass operation, surgeons rely on indirect temperature readings of the brain by using the nostrils or a patient’s bladder temperature as a proxy. Keeping brain temperature from going too high or too low is critical — going outside those ranges can be deadly. LumenAstra offers a noninvasive way to measure brain temperature directly, Pollock says. He believes the technology has the potential to save an additional 20 percent of patients who undergo aortic repairs, as well as prevent heat stroke in soldiers, firefighters and athletes, and better monitor stroke patients.

Even though surgeons are enthusiastic and offering to help test the technology, Pollock says, starting LumenAstra was a risk. When it launched, he and Popovic figured it had a 20/80 chance of success. After five years, the odds have flipped to 90/10, Pollock estimates.

Founder of Silvis Materials, Patty Ferreira at the company’s laboratory where she is working on a biodegradable industrial glue.

Matt Nager

Pollock isn’t alone in using his experience to innovate and provide solutions to long-standing problems. Ferreira founded Silvis Materials to create a nontoxic industrial binder, or glue. She and her team were able to make the glue out of tree cellulose to be used in everything from packaging to particleboard. She believes it has the potential to replace formaldehyde, a known carcinogen, in industrial glues.

After working on multiple start-ups and launching three financial technology apps, Ferreira understood how to launch a company and build a successful team. Her years as a product development engineer creating prototypes for everything from toys to medical packaging gave her the background and confidence to dream up a glue no one thought possible and make it a reality, she says.  

“I wish more … older people would see that their lifetime of experience adds up to incredibly transferable skills,” Halvorsen says. “A lot of people don’t realize how much they actually know how to do.”

The oldest face in the room

But getting people to think of older adults as on cutting edge isn’t easy. Older people aren’t always viewed as having fresh ideas, being nimble with technology or having the Olympic-level energy needed to build a new business. 

Two-thirds of older workers have felt age discrimination in the workplace, according to AARP research. That includes assumptions that they aren’t tech-savvy or ambitious and are resistant to change. But a recent AARP-LinkedIn study found that as AI has been rapidly introduced, older adults are closing the skills gap with younger people. 

That doesn’t surprise María González, 62, founder of M&A Supplier Diversity Consultants, who retired from a career in procurement for the state of Massachusetts and then launched a company in 2019 to teach small businesses how to land government procurement contracts. She’s been in demand as a conference speaker ever since and uses AI to manage her training workshops.

People “seem to forget that when the internet came about, nobody knew how to use it. There was no manual,” González says. “We learned as we went.” She and others who have been in the workforce for decades keep on learning, she adds.  

But customers and clients may  gray hair and worry that late-career start-up founders won’t be around for the long haul. Some older start-up founders are advised to get creative to combat the desire for young faces in that world. A venture-capital investor friend of Pollock’s suggested he take younger members of his tea to investor meetings.

“Investors look at me and probably think, Why am I going to put $5 million into this company? By the time we get it to market, he’ll be 75,” Pollock says. 

 Investors can be a tough audience.To ensure that his energy and enthusiasm come across, Pollock intentionally sits on the edge of his chair so he’s leaning forward, not back, during discussions. He also brings along his 37-year-old chief technology officer.    

It’s not just investors who see older faces as outsiders in the entrepreneurial space. When Ferreira was offered a place at Techstars, a prestigious start-up incubator known for spotting the next big idea, most people in her cohort were 25 to 30 years old. But it was her peers, former founders themselves, who didn’t understand why she wanted to start a company. “I kept being told: At my age, I should be an investor, not a founder,” Ferreira says. 

Critical connections and deep pockets

Liz Martin, founder of MYNE Beauty, formulated products specifically for women over 50.

Elias Williams

Real-world experience isn’t the only thing that can give 50-plus entrepreneurs an edge. Long years of building relationships side by side in cubicles and conference rooms create a robust Rolodex. Alternative funding avenues and other critical connections can help get new ventures started by older people off the ground. Liz Martin launched her company, MYNE Beauty (MYNE stands for My Youth Never Ends), to fill a hole in the market. Instead of antiaging potions, she’s creating formulas to simply make mature skin look its best. 

As a beauty company executive at Estée Lauder and other companiesfor 30 years, Martin knew everything from how to mix a formula to the optimal temperature for producing it. To get her makeup from concept to cosmetic counter, Martin called on her long-standing relationships with chemists who could get the texture she wanted, suppliers who could give her the ingredients she needed and packaging engineers who could incorporate magnifying mirrors and large-print labels into her products. An old friend at a cosmetic plant let Martin order an initial run of 1,000 units of her product instead of the usual minimum order of 5,000 — a key to keeping costs down as she scales up. “I’m lucky I’ve worked with people … who want to see me succeed,” Martin says.

Liz Martin designed easy-to-read packaging and included a magnifying mirror in MYNE Beauty's compact.

Elias Williams

Ferreira is also calling on her network as she develops Silvis Materials. Early on, people she knew from other stages in her career introduced her to company leaders who shared insight into the market and on navigating regulations. Through TechStars, she connected with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy scientific research lab, to test her adhesive in particleboard for the construction industry.

Age may offer another advantage when it comes to finding the money to get a business off the ground: savings. People 50-plus have had decades to accumulate retirement funds, investments and property that they can invest in their new businesses. That can give mature entrepreneurs more runway than a younger entrepreneur:  A cash crunch is the leading reason entrepreneurial ventures fail, according to CB Insights, a business analytics platform.

By bankrolling the first two years of her company and not paying herself a salary, Ferreira was able to make a prototype to show potential partners. While Gonzalez was getting her company off the ground, she paid herself out of her savings. Martin funded the early stages of her company without bank loans.. 

No founder’s journey is easy, and taking roadblocks in stride is often what sets seasoned entrepreneurs apart, says Foster. They’ve made mistakes, both professionally and personally, suffered loss and were able to get up and fight another day. “Older entrepreneurs … usually have a more demonstrated ability to navigate through uncertainty and adapt,” Foster says. 

And when others don’t have confidence in your vision, hearing “no” doesn’t faze them. The National Science Foundation turned Ferreira down for grants four times. “Finally, the program manager called me up and said, ‘You must know something we don’t, because you keep applying,’ ” Ferreira says. She got the grant.

González thinks experience is important, but there’s another bonus that comes with age: comfort in who she is and no need to prove her worth. “There’s nothing holding me back. I no longer have self-doubts,” González says. “I know what I am, I know who I am, and I know that my knowledge is real.”