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Let's be real for a second. I'm 48, perimenopausal, raising two kids, caring for my aging mom, and married to a man I feel like I barely see anymore. So when I hear about 20-year-olds launching startups from their dorm rooms, my first instinct isn't inspiration. It's nausea.
But here's what the entrepreneurship world doesn't say loudly enough: the average age of U.S. business owners is 45. Starting a business after 40 isn't a risk. For most people, it's actually an advantage.
You're Done Guessing
By midlife, you've built a career, managed people, survived economic downturns, and — most importantly — figured out which problems are actually worth solving. You're not chasing ideas for validation or a TechCrunch headline. You're building because you see a real gap and trust yourself enough to fill it.
That's why founders over 40 tend to build more durable companies. Economists even have a name for this wave of experienced professionals launching second acts: the silver tsunami. And it's only growing.
The Data Backs This Up
This shift isn't just something we feel anecdotally. PayPal partnered with GenSando to create the Slice of Life Survey, a research initiative examining the financial, emotional, and caregiving realities shaping midlife entrepreneurship. The findings are striking.
Nearly 70% of working caregivers struggle to balance job and family demands. One in three reports high emotional stress. These pressures shape how and when people build companies — not because midlife founders lack ambition, but because they're navigating far more complex lives than their younger counterparts.
That complexity, it turns out, is exactly what makes them better builders.
The Second Act Advantage
Most founders over 40 don't start with a dramatic leap. They start with overlap.
When Carolyn Rodz and I were building Hello Alice, a small business fintech, I was still working full-time at Dell. I was 40. We each had two babies, lived in different cities, and eventually moved in together just to share babysitters and commiserate over our laptops. We built the company in the margins of our lives.
What we lacked in unlimited time and energy, we made up for in pattern recognition. We understood the ecosystem, knew our customer deeply, and built something that solved a real problem. No wasted time proving ourselves. No chasing ideas that sounded good but solved nothing.
That's the quiet advantage of starting later. You build smarter from day one.
Real Life Doesn't Pause for Your Startup
The sandwich generation life is no joke. If you're in it, you might be running carpool, booking your parent's colonoscopy, and approving employee timesheets — all before noon.
This is the backdrop for millions of founders over 40. And while it's heavy, it doesn't make you weaker. It makes you more disciplined, more resourceful, and more clear-eyed about what actually matters.
The Skill That Changes Everything
Here's the hardest lesson I've learned: you cannot do this alone.
Founders over 40 don't succeed by grinding harder. They succeed by building smarter — outsourcing, delegating, and yes, sometimes paying to make a problem disappear. Support isn't a luxury. It's infrastructure. When you're running on empty, your business feels it too.
Founder First. Business Second.
At Hello Alice, we built our entire philosophy around this idea: take care of the founder first, and the business follows. When founders are supported as whole human beings — not just as CEOs — their companies are stronger and more resilient for it.
If you're thinking about starting a business after 40, you're not late. You're not behind. You're experienced, intentional, and finally ready to build something that lasts.
This isn't your first act. It's the one where everything clicks.