People seem to worship the myth of the prodigy—the 22-year-old in a hoodie who changes the world between college lectures and frat parties. But here's a dose of reality: the ideal age to start a startup isn't 22. It's not even 32. It's when you've spent enough years in the real world to know what's fundamentally broken. Spoiler alert—that usually means you're 40 or older.

But who needs facts when you have fairy tales, right? Except numbers don't lie. The average age of founders with successful exits? 47. Fast-growing startups? Typically led by 45-year-olds.

Look at the heavyweights:

- Jeff Bezos was 30 when he founded Amazon. He didn't dream up online retail while cramming for finals.

- Elon Musk was 31 when he founded SpaceX. He wasn't tinkering with rockets in his dorm room.

- Musk became involved with Tesla at 32, investing early and eventually becoming CEO at 37. Electric cars weren't exactly a college-side

project.

- Reed Hastings was 37 when he co-founded Netflix. He wasn't fresh out of college binge-watching shows in his dorm.

-

founded Intel at 41 and 39, respectively. They didn't revolutionize computing on a whim.

Sure, you'll point to Mark Zuckerberg, who launched Facebook at 19, or Bill Gates, who started Microsoft at 20. But for every wunderkind, there are countless founders who hit their stride later.

After over a decade slogging through the startup world, here's the pattern:

The younger founder chirps, "I want to build the Uber for dog walking." How original.

The older founder states, "After two decades in accounting, I've noticed every small business struggles with this specific problem. Here's how we fix it." See the difference?

- Context matters as much as code.

- Lived experience beats market research.

- Industry expertise outweighs your ability to juggle programming languages.

History shows us that groundbreaking startups rarely sprout from naïve optimism tucked away in ivory towers. They emerge after decades of watching the same problems persist and deciding enough is enough.

So if you're hitting 40 and panicking that you haven't launched the next big app, relax. Maybe it's time to use that hard-earned experience to tackle real issues.

Because, contrary to popular belief, wisdom actually counts for something.