theguy22
Contributor
Hi all,
I'm 25 years of age and only finished reading TMF a few months ago. Since then, I've made it my goal to become a multi-millionaire within the next 5-7 years, give or take.
Committed to this goal, I thought it was a sensible idea for me to research the average age of a successful/high-growth start-up founder (now when I say research, I mean just running some Google searches and reading the results on the first page).
From where I'm from, the UK, it seems like the age is 36. (source)
The consensus based on the first page seems to be either 34 or 45 (see pic at end of this post).
(Note: these are the ages in which they found the company, the exits probably came between 5-10 years after)
Be it 34 or 45, these are relatively big ages. Now I'm no expert but I would make the argument that the reason why a start-up at this age is more likely to be successful is because of domain expertise.
Domain expertise simply put just means having in-depth knowledge about a particular field/industry, typically acquired through working in that industry for many years (7+ realistically). If you have domain expertise, you'll know how the industry is shaping up, what its trends are, whether it's growing or declining and what its biggest problems are. It's this last one that puts you at the most ripe position for starting a business in that market. Interestingly, one of the top reasons why start-ups fail is because of no market need. And it makes sense... If you don't know what the pain points of a customer in a particular market are, how can you design a product/service that will solve their problems?
When you're creating a product for a market that you don't have knowledge about, it's very easy to fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect — this is when you overestimate your ability in something that you have limited knowledge/competence in. You think you've spotted a problem but you haven't, because you don't understand the needs of the customers in that market well enough to know whether that problem is actually a problem or not.
The problem I'm having with Fastlane is that I'm not sure how I can become a multi-millionaire while I'm young (which is the point of fastlane) when domain expertise realistically takes at least 7+ years to build. How do I know that if I launch a product, it's actually solving a problem in its market? Even if I take an existing product, how do I make it 10x better when I don't know what the objective criteria is? I'm not trying to have or promote a defeatist attitude, I'm specifically curious to know what this forum's thoughts are on the issue of domain expertise especially given that many of the aspiring entrepreneurs here are early twenty-somethings wanting to become multi-millionaires before 30.
I just feel as though if you're a young entrepreneur (<27), you're inevitably going to lack sufficient domain expertise to create something that can scale to the point that it gets acquired for a large exit sum. Thus, you're more constrained to starting low barrier to entry businesses which would violate CENTS. So my question really is if you're a young entrepreneur how should you approach fastlane entrepreneurship and how do you address lack of domain expertise?
I would appreciate if the responses are pragmatic rather than the generic 'change your mindset', 'you can put anything you put your mind to' kind of stuff.
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I'm 25 years of age and only finished reading TMF a few months ago. Since then, I've made it my goal to become a multi-millionaire within the next 5-7 years, give or take.
Committed to this goal, I thought it was a sensible idea for me to research the average age of a successful/high-growth start-up founder (now when I say research, I mean just running some Google searches and reading the results on the first page).
From where I'm from, the UK, it seems like the age is 36. (source)
The consensus based on the first page seems to be either 34 or 45 (see pic at end of this post).
(Note: these are the ages in which they found the company, the exits probably came between 5-10 years after)
Be it 34 or 45, these are relatively big ages. Now I'm no expert but I would make the argument that the reason why a start-up at this age is more likely to be successful is because of domain expertise.
Domain expertise simply put just means having in-depth knowledge about a particular field/industry, typically acquired through working in that industry for many years (7+ realistically). If you have domain expertise, you'll know how the industry is shaping up, what its trends are, whether it's growing or declining and what its biggest problems are. It's this last one that puts you at the most ripe position for starting a business in that market. Interestingly, one of the top reasons why start-ups fail is because of no market need. And it makes sense... If you don't know what the pain points of a customer in a particular market are, how can you design a product/service that will solve their problems?
When you're creating a product for a market that you don't have knowledge about, it's very easy to fall victim to the Dunning-Kruger effect — this is when you overestimate your ability in something that you have limited knowledge/competence in. You think you've spotted a problem but you haven't, because you don't understand the needs of the customers in that market well enough to know whether that problem is actually a problem or not.
The problem I'm having with Fastlane is that I'm not sure how I can become a multi-millionaire while I'm young (which is the point of fastlane) when domain expertise realistically takes at least 7+ years to build. How do I know that if I launch a product, it's actually solving a problem in its market? Even if I take an existing product, how do I make it 10x better when I don't know what the objective criteria is? I'm not trying to have or promote a defeatist attitude, I'm specifically curious to know what this forum's thoughts are on the issue of domain expertise especially given that many of the aspiring entrepreneurs here are early twenty-somethings wanting to become multi-millionaires before 30.
I just feel as though if you're a young entrepreneur (<27), you're inevitably going to lack sufficient domain expertise to create something that can scale to the point that it gets acquired for a large exit sum. Thus, you're more constrained to starting low barrier to entry businesses which would violate CENTS. So my question really is if you're a young entrepreneur how should you approach fastlane entrepreneurship and how do you address lack of domain expertise?
I would appreciate if the responses are pragmatic rather than the generic 'change your mindset', 'you can put anything you put your mind to' kind of stuff.
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