Marc Andreessen (who you might remember from a little product called Netscape) has an interesting article up today, called Age and the Entrepreneur. At 37 years old, this is a topic that has certainly crossed my mind; a nagging feeling that the obligations of home and family make entrepreneurial expression much more difficult. You can’t, after all, live on Ramen out of the back of a car (I’ll tell that story later) while you create the next Great American Product. The article is basically a recap of a frightfully thorough study by Dean Simonton, professor of psychology at University of California Davis. Marc asks a couple of very relevant questions (for me anyway) at the end, and I am looking forward to his follow-up.
Interestingly, the findings are similar, though considerably more detailed, to what Napoleon Hill reported in Think and Grow Rich: as a general rule of thumb, the early 40’s are the start of the most productive period of a person’s life (unless you are a poet, apparently).
