What it is like to launch your first startup at 65

Is it reasonable to initiate such a high-pressure endeavor instead of settling for the rocking chair?

The stereotypical image of an entrepreneur is a college dropout kid, full of ideas and ambitions, and even risk-loving, ready to hustle and to spend a year sleeping less than 4 hours a day over a mattress on the floor of a shared apartment in Silicon Valley, until –eventually– success arrives. As the entrepreneur ages, if successful, he or she is supposed to move to boards of directors, investing, etc. For instance, Paul Graham is now 55; he is currently retired as a founder and entrepreneur, so his activity is mostly to give advice in YC and to make investments.

But what if you are 65 years old, and you are the founder of your first startup? Well, as it turns out, this is exactly my case, from the moment when my (younger) partners agreed last year to join me to start Avalinguo, an EdTech company for foreign language-learning, with me as the current CEO. In other posts, I’ll tell you what we do.

Some say that you can “become an entrepreneur at any age”: there are even books about this. It makes sense because we, the mature professionals, have some capabilities that we learned in the previous years: I have knowledge about AI, programming, systematic experimentation, data analysis, and well, life in general.

But to experience it firsthand is tricky because:

• You need to be humble because much of your previous achievements are much less impressive in the startup environment. For instance, as a Computer Science professor and Artificial Intelligence researcher at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, I was called “Dr. Brena”, mentored students for who I was (still am) a paternal figure. Now I’m just another entrepreneur, learning a lot of things I knew nothing about, like lean methodologies and iteration cycles, bullseye channel marketing, investor scouting, so instead of being an expert, now I’m a beginner in many aspects (the bright side is that I enjoy learning).
• You face many preconceptions typical of the Silicon Valley popular image: in some startups events, the other attendees thought I’d be one of the mentors or investors just by looking at me. Then, some investors hesitate to support my startup because there is the suspicion that I do this as a form of retirement hobby instead of taking the grandchildren to the park (one of them commented this candidly to me).
• You realize you are not going to be a “serial entrepreneur”. I have basically one shot at this (factoring pivots). Someone posted today on Twitter “The key is to fail a lot and then succeed”. Well, I cannot follow this advice.

But regardless of age, there is a real brotherhood among entrepreneurs. This past June I went to Madrid for a Startup Bootcamp organized by the Madrid Innovation-Driven Ecosystem (MIDE) at TheCube, and the helping attitude of both the organizers (thanks to Javier, Monica, and Alberto) and the other entrepreneurs was nothing short of amazing. The youngest of the participants was just 18 years old –almost 50 years younger than me– but we got along as comrades in the same quest.

So, what am I trying to prove? As it turns out, it’s not about my value as a person: I try to prove that my project is viable, and in the end, that it could make a dent in the world.

But it could also be a bit about myself. Since my youth, I used to come up with hundreds of ideas of all sorts, most of them technical; in my twenties, I had already registered a patent, so it looked kind of natural to undertake a career as a scientist. But I’m realizing that more than a scientist I’m an inventor, so innovation is more aligned with my interests and capabilities than science. Discovering the universe is not my thing; innovate in the real world is.

That’s why I’m founding a startup instead of taking grandchildren to the park, besides the fact that I have no grandchildren.