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The mean age at founding a 1 in 1000 fastest growing organization is 45.

Which makes sense, because industry connections for talent and sales are incredibly valuable.

And this : "Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success"

Makes sense that the high profile founders that started companies when young were largely inventing new industries from scratch. I'm actually struggling to think of a case where that's not true. Stripe kind of fits, but that's arguable.

All the examples I can think of didn't actually start a new industry.

They did get in early on a new industry, but they didn't start it even if they ended up defining it.

Facebook and Google were latecomers. Facebook just executed better than Friendster and Myspace, and Google had their link-counting gimmick.

> Google had their link-counting gimmick

In the early years, Google was a breath of fresh air; their product (search engine) was miles better than the competition, it looked better, and it wasn't encumbered with ads. That was no gimmick. It's sad, what things have come to.

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