running through the quotes in this article. I don't have the data to back me up, but I would be willing to bet that the average incremental rate of return for 20-someething entrepreneurs is no different than for 30- or 40-somethings.

We all know that youth is a double edged sword; for every spectacular success in that list of top 20, there are 100+ spectacular failures. A 20-something is probably more likely to take more risk. Therefore, by definition, the investors who invest in them are generally taking bigger risks. In contrast, a 30-someething with a family will generally not start a company until they have squeezed a certain amount of risk out of the deal for themselves. This benefit is passed on to investors, or so the theory goes.

So in some ways, I would liken the difference between investing in young vs. middle-age entrepreneurs to the difference between investing in lottery tickets and municipal bonds (perhaps not to that extreme, of course). Of what relevance is a list of top 20 lottery winners when trying to draw some correlation between age and risk?

I've started companies in my 20's and 30's. I'm about to do it again as I stand at the threshold of my 40's. While I, as an individual data point, am not statistically relevant, I believe in my heart that I'm much more likely to produce stellar returns for investors today than 10 years ago.

Of course, I have no choice but to believe that.

Paul Conley
Age 39
Reston, Virginia