In the past the stereotypical entrepreneur was always seen as young and if you look at Bill Gates and Richard Branson they started their empires when just out of their teens.

However latest findings in the States have shown that the fastest growing age group for people starting a new business are the 50 – 65 year olds. Presumably because of a forced move from corporate life, or even disenchantment with continually working for someone else.

But is there actually a best age to become an entrepreneur? Do the young have more energy and creativity? Certainly they aren’t held back by thinking that things “can’t be done”. Or are the accumulated wisdom, knowledge and connections of older people more valuable assets for starting a business?

There is also the question of opportunity. When in your twenties, you are more likely to not have a family and mortgage to support and so can take a chance with a new venture, likewise when much older you may have paid the mortgage off and the family is independent.

So perhaps you have got to start your business either in your early years, or give up the idea until you are much older, with the middle years being ones of hard graft as a “wage slave”.

Let me give the findings of the Company Partners statistician and my own personal views.

Looking at the age range of entrepreneurs on the Company Partners site, we have members starting at just 15 and going up to a grand 86 years of life. The average age however is 38. This closely matches a figure from the States that gives 39 as an average age for start-ups. The age distribution of Company Partners members is fairly even, with a slight skew towards the lower end.

We have to bear in mind that not all Company Partners members are just starting a business; many already have an established company and are looking to grow it faster. But these figures give a good feel for the entrepreneurial age range.

To my mind this vindicates the thought that now days there is no one age that you have to be in order to start a business. It may though be easier to start certain types of businesses at different ages. If you are designing and selling apps for iPhones, you’re likely to be younger than if you are setting up a consultancy. That is simply a question of personal interest and using the skills & experience that you have.

Angel Investors are not listed in the Yellow Pages and finding one can be a time consuming and expensive business, especially if using some of the pricey business angel intermediaries that are out there.

Actually the topic of where to find investors for a business opportunity deserves more attention and I’ll cover that in a later posting. You won’t see this covered in any of the other Business Angel networks blogs since they don’t invite comparisons, but Company Partners is probably the most cost effective and we aim to be open.

But back to timing. You’ve got a great opportunity, written your business plan and are just starting to look for an investor. How long do you think finding one will take? A couple weeks? A couple months?

The shortest time that I’ve seen that one of our members take was 2 days. The longest time 18 months. That’s in finding an Investor that was new to them (not family or friends).

There are so many variables at play; market area, quality of opportunity, how determined you are in searching, etc., that giving an average time can be misleading. However it is safe to say that it can take months rather than weeks and involve a lot of your own time.

There is a random variable also, Business Angels have a pattern of behaviour that means at any one time not all are available. They tend to dip in and out of the market, because once they have identified a couple possible opportunities they are out of action while investigating them. Coming back into the market if those opportunities hadn’t panned out, or just for more investment.

Finding an investor is though only one of the time elements, since you will also want to take some time to get to know each other and do due-diligence. The advantage of a Business Angel over for instance venture capital, is that they will make quick decisions, but both you and the Business Angel should do all you can to ensure that you will work well together before proceeding.

Finally there will be legal and accounting work to be completed in terms of possible partnership agreements (I suggest you do write down the roles and expectations you have of each other), share allocation and sorting out when funds may be input into the company.

As you can see this is not an overnight activity. Think of it in terms of buying or selling a house, the searching and surveyor (due-diligence) work necessary, together with the contracts, probably means they take a similar time and just like finding a Business Angel will be affected by the market and quality of what is being offered.

During our last Business Plan Workshop we had an interesting question asked  – “when should someone accept that their idea for a business will not work?”

Normally I am adamant that you need persistence and belief in yourself, never give up your dream. But this made me stop and think.

Certainly in the past I’ve had entrepreneurs contact me to describe a business idea that I can see is never going to work and sadly they may have spent years of their time and thousands of pounds in developing it.

More importantly than my opinion, when I quiz them on the evidence to indicate there is a need and if anyone would actually pay for the product or service, the information is non-existent or poor at best.

By evidence I really mean market research and that’s not just asking your friends if they think it’s a good idea. Rather the idea must be one that will form the basis of a business, that will satisfy a real need and that the public will give you their hard earned cash for it.

Actually the market research doesn’t have to be rocket science, but it must be reality. There are a lot of papers already written on most market areas that can start you off (the British Library’s Business Centre is a good source).

There are always competitors, or alternatives to your idea that you can check out. You can talk to prospective buyers, either consumer or trade and don’t ask general questions leading them to say that it’s a nice idea, ask for advance orders – pin them down. Then you’ll see the reality.

Once you are up and running, the question becomes “how long should you give it, to show that it will work?”

Again my instinct is to not give up too easily. If the market demand seems to be there, but you have to overcome difficulties, that’s normal and the great entrepreneurs have all had to overcome initial hurdles. But if it’s not taking off, stop and think whether it’s anything that can be fixed, or a fundamental flaw.

Michael Birch, who sold his social web site Bebo for $850M a couple years ago had tried lots of different ideas. Some worked, but weren’t scalable. Some worked but weren’t able to make a profit. Others may have been a good idea but there were basic flaws. Such as the address book updater (I think there are still some of these around).  He found that unless everyone on the contact list updated their address books, the user would simply stop using it. Of course not everyone did update, so it never took off.

Each time he learnt from the experience and moved on. How long did he give each one? Probably only a few months, but the Internet can give very quick feedback. For a traditional business it can take longer, however you should have set realistic goals that allow for the market you are in and be checking against them. If you’re not meeting them, what’s the reason?

You may find it is obstacles that can be overcome, or it might be that there is a basic issue with the business concept that no amount of tenacity could fix. Being tenacious and determined needs to be applied to the overall goal of being a success, not just one venture.

Knowing when to take the learning and move on, without giving up at the first sign of trouble is a difficult one. But I think it can be seen as the difference between operational problems and concept failure. If the homework is done first many of the concept issues should have already been spotted.

Over the years I’ve had friends that have talked about starting their own business but never got around to it. More recently I’ve also had hundreds of entrepreneurs contact me about various aspects of either starting a business, or making a significant change to an existing business to move it to a higher level of activity, but then not done so.

It’s been a puzzle, because not all of these were due to lack of finance, or capability. Many of these people had money, were well qualified and experienced at what they wanted to do. So what was going on here?

The first observation I had was that quite a lot of them were individuals, rather than those with business partners. Even the ones in businesses already started, were often founder/directors of the business, with limited additional leadership in the company.

It makes quite a difference in committing to get actions done, if you know that you have a business partner who will be chasing you.  It was one of the reasons that we set up Company Partners, in order to allow individuals to find a business partner to start or grow a business with.

But it’s become apparent that there is also a “psychological” aspect to why people just dream about starting their own company, or committing to the big change that will push their fledgling business forward.

While it’s a dream it’s warm and fuzzy. You can go to sleep at night thinking about how your life can change for the better, fantasise about the great time you’ll have when your business takes off. How your friends and family will admire you. It’s very comforting.

But as soon as you take the plunge into the cold waters of reality, starting a business may be a nightmare. You’ll have difficult decisions to make, it might not work out.

The result is that for many, the warm and fuzzy dream becomes preferable, even if unconsciously.

Sometimes to make significant changes we have to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone and just do it.

I have succumbed to the inevitable and started a blog for Company Partners. The key and dare I say the challenge is to have informative and interesting content and not just my personal ramblings, although there will be a fair quantity of those, no doubt thrown in to the mix.

The blog will however keep to what we know:

• Elements of starting a business
• Growing existing businesses
• Anything about Business Partners, Mentors and Business Angels
• Raising business angel investment
• Finding rewarding business investment opportunities

While I may be commenting on what is being said or done elsewhere, I really don’t want to just duplicate content or opinion that is already out there, that’s of no value to anyone.

If you are one of the early readers of this blog, you have a chance to shape it by letting me know if there are particular areas that you would like us to cover, just hit the “comment” button.