Professionals daydreaming of starting their own businesses may figure that the best time to get started is when they’ve built career capital and stable finances. But founders like Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Alexandr Wang have bucked the norm that you need decades of experience to be a successful entrepreneur. And now, Ronnen Harary, the 55-year-old cofounder of toy empire Spin Master, even says he “couldn’t start” his company at his current ripe age.
“I’m an advocate of just starting a little bit earlier, and then letting all the energy and all the benefits of starting earlier compound. And there’s a lot of benefits of starting in your 20s,” Harary said in a recent Business Insider interview.
“Everybody’s rooting for you. When you’re 25, no one sees you as competition. When you’re at 35, potentially people see you as competition.”
Harary was just 23 when he cofounded the company with his childhood best friend Anton Rabie and university classmate Ben Varadi in Toronto, Canada. Right after graduating college, they launched Spin Master in 1994, releasing a grass-growing novelty toy called Earth Buddy. It was an unexpected hit, and the company continued to release new products.
Its toys have since defined the childhood of millions of kids; millennials might remember growing up with Etch A Sketch and ICEE makers; and for Gen Zers, Spin Master toys like Mighty Beanz and Kinetic Sand were all the rage. Today, Gen Alpha has come to know the brand through Paw Patrol: a highly popular TV show airing in over 160 countries and 30 languages. It is currently Spin Master’s biggest franchise, with its third feature film hitting the silver screen this week.
Spin Master is now a billion-dollar success—but looking back, Harary said he wouldn’t have had the energy to turn Spin Master into the giant it is today if he were to start now.
“As a result of being in your 20s, you have so much energy, you have so much drive, determination, and will to get things done,” Haray continued. “When you hit your middle age, it decreases.”
The average founder is 42 years old—but some leaders say it’s better to start younger
Since the internet era, a litany of young founders have made their mark in business. Companies like Microsoft and Dell Technologies were conceived out of college dorm rooms, and billion-dollar AI start-ups like Scale AI and Cursor were built by Gen Zers.
However, the average age of entrepreneurs who start their own businesses still rests at 42, according to the Harvard Business Review. And when it comes to the top 0.1% of start-ups, creators typically launch at 45 years old. While software and tech skew younger, 20-somethings have yet to become the true face of entrepreneurship—even though leaders maintain it’s the best era to start.
Jensen Huang, who created the $5.3 trillion chips giant Nvidia when he was just 30 years old, also said it’s “the single greatest time to start a company.” And he’s especially “jealous” of what lies ahead for young founders in the tech revolution.
Meanwhile, Stephane Kasriel, the former CEO of $1 billion Upwork, said it’s important to encourage young people to be as “entrepreneurial as they can.” He reasoned that when 35 rolls around, people often have a mortgage and children to take care of, making them less “risk-averse” than founders without those responsibilities on their plate.
Launching a company right out of college is the “best possible time” to build a career of choice and skirt the limitations of traditional work, he said.
“For some people that means starting a company, and for others it means becoming a freelancer. Whichever route you choose, the time in your life to do it is now,” Kasriel wrote in a 2017 Entrepreneur article. “It will never be easier to strike out on your own than it is in your early 20s.”
