Say the words “start-up founder” and most of us picture the same stereotype: a hoodie-wearing twentysomething, laptop glued to his fingers, fuelled by flat whites in a Shoreditch café, or cans of energy drinks in a university dorm room.
The reality is often quite different. Many of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs have not been fresh-faced wunderkinds at all. James Dyson didn’t launch his revolutionary bagless vacuum until he was 46. Two years short of his 80th birthday, he remains the driving force behind Dyson, which achieved record global sales of £7.1 billion in 2023.
Louise Hill was 47 when she started working on GoHenry, a money app and debit card for children. Thirteen years on from launch, 2.2 million young people have learnt financial skills through the platform and Hill, now 62, continues to lead GoHenry despite its acquisition by US firm Acorns in 2022.
These examples suggest age is less a hindrance than a hidden advantage.
Better bets
Older entrepreneurs know which problems are worth solving. They’ve survived recessions, restructurings and career pivots. They bring scepticism where it’s needed and realism where younger founders may be dazzled by hype. Their companies tend to be steadier as a result.
The same holds true for older employees. A 55-year-old finance director may not be fluent in TikTok trends, but they know how to manage cashflow in a crisis. Experience equips them to cut back when necessary, take risks when justified and keep a company afloat when storms hit. Working later in life may even be good for health: last week, research published by Bupa found more than a quarter of people believe staying in work beyond retirement age will help them live longer. The finding comes ahead of Sir Charlie Mayfield’s Keep Britain Working review, due out next month.
Experience on air
David Lloyd knows what it means to start over later in life. After holding senior roles at the BBC, Chrysalis and Virgin, he became a first-time founder at 60, creating Boom Radio for the baby-boomer generation. “Broadcasting is a young people’s business,” he said. “Here I am, having done most things in my field, and yet if I walked into a job interview they’d think, ‘There’s an old bloke, who would want him?’ So if you want a gig, you have to create it yourself.”
Now 64, Lloyd is one of the younger members of his 40-strong team, whose average age is 72, with a DJ on the payroll who will turn 100 this month. Far from a liability, Lloyd sees their age as an asset: “Business is usually about people, and you just manage people a lot better when you’re older. I look back at my first management job at 27 and cringe; I was so bad. Nobody’s perfect — but you meet so many people through your working career and learning how to deal with them is one of the biggest things.”
Risk and reward
Founding a company later in life is not without hazards. Hill had two children and a hefty mortgage when she walked away from a safe executive career to start GoHenry. Lloyd took a six-figure sum out of his pension to launch Boom, calling it a “considerable risk.” Female founders often face an extra hurdle. Kim Antoniou, who discovered tech in her forties and now runs Auris, a literacy app developer, says venture capitalists still struggle to picture a woman in her sixties as a credible tech entrepreneur. One investor even boasted of backing “a grandmother”, as if that alone proved diversity — but also because it was such a rarity.
At a separate pitch event, where she was one of 20 finalists competing for investment, she was left feeling “ancient” as one of only two women, with the other half her age. “I was so broken by the event because I was facing the reality that when I went to venture capitalists and private equity investors I was going to find it really, really hard to compete with all these youngsters,” she said.
Yet Antoniou, now 64, has learned to embrace her experience. Planning her “not retiring” 65th birthday for next January, she told me she feels more comfortable in her own skin than ever. Last week she spent two days in a field at Ideas Fest, a two-day self-styled “Glastonbury for business” event, but instead of the usual festival garb of cowboy boots and glitter tattoos, Antoniou stuck to her pearl earrings.
Similarly, Lloyd says he and his team lean into their quirks as a more seasoned bunch: every board meeting starts off with a quick discussion about their ailments. (Five of the station’s presenters have had prostate cancer.) “When you get to your sixties and seventies, you end up talking about each other’s health first because inevitably somebody’s got some kind of health story and you can empathise with that.” But he insists older teams aren’t less productive. “The amount of sick days we have is negligible. Our team is so intent on turning up, it never impacts the business.”
More please
Older founders like Dyson, Hill, Lloyd and Antoniou show that experience is not baggage but ballast. They bring the patience to refine ideas, the resilience to survive set-backs and the judgment to know when to take risks. Their stories also reveal the barriers: financing is harder to secure, stereotypes linger, and investors still treat grey hair as a red flag.
But Britain’s economy is ageing, and so is its workforce. More people are working into their sixties and seventies, and many are choosing entrepreneurship over retirement. That isn’t a quirk — it’s a resource. If we continue to equate innovation with youth alone, we’ll miss out on founders with the skills, networks and perspective to build businesses that last.
The future of British enterprise won’t belong only to bright-eyed graduates or only to seasoned professionals. It will be strongest when the two work together — youthful audacity balanced by the steadiness of experience. If we can overcome our bias for youth, Britain may find its next wave of entrepreneurial energy lies not in the dorm room or the Shoreditch café, but at the kitchen table of someone who already knows what failure feels like and isn’t afraid to try again.