When you think about the people who start companies you probably envision a young Steve Jobs building the Apple 1 in his garage, or the guys from Google writing code in their grade student dorms eating nothing but roman noodles and Burger King, or Mark Zuckerberg working 90+ hours a week in hooded sweatshirt and flip flops trying to build thefacebook.com.
However, you might be surprised to learn that the majority of people who start a business don’t fit the stereotypical entrepreneur profile glorified in the media.
The fact is when you look at who America’s real entrepreneurs are you don’t see many Harvard college-kid dropouts turned billionaires like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg.
You find that the average age of most company founders is 40 years old. And of those founders, most have graduated college, have several years of experience working for other companies, and are married with kids.
Did you know that Sam Walton was 44 years old when he stated the first Wal-Mart store?
He was even older when the chain really took off.
The infographic below gives you a surprising look at the real entrepreneurs who create jobs and prop up our economy.
There are about a half million startups launched in the US each year. It turns out the vast majority of them are not founded by young entrepreneurs who dropped out of college to launch a hot tech company.
What these statistics tell us is that no matter where you are in your education, your career, or your life, you can take the leap and try to start a new business. And whether your business creates one job or a hundred jobs, it’s still an incredible accomplishment.
We hope this infographic inspires you to follow your own dreams and start your own business.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of the startup tools blog series Start Your Business brought to you by the marketing team at UniTel Voice, the virtual phone system priced and designed for startups and small business owners.
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