Starting a business: What the over-50s need to know

Think "startup company" and you might think it is the preserve of youthful entrepreneurs behind companies such as Google, Facebook or Innocent. But in reality, more than a quarter of the companies set up in Britain are started by people aged between 50 and 65 – and the failure rate is lower. Between 2001 and 2005, "olderpreneurs" created 93,500 companies in Britain with 400,000 new jobs. They are just as happy to take risk as younger business startups and are just as likely to be found in the high-tech and creative industries supposedly preferred by the young, according to a study by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta)... read more

The Guardian, September 09