For decades, venture capitalists idolized and threw money at young developers-turned-founders, who were often white men already in Silicon Valley or promising university students, believing they had the best shot at entrepreneurial success. After all, some of the biggest or fastest growing companies were started in dorm rooms.
Over many years as an angel investor and general partner that backed more than 40 startups, Katerina Stroponiati invested in a lot of companies with founders who fit that description. But she didn’t subscribe to the idea that young founders exclusively had the best chance of success.
Eager to support a variety of entrepreneurs, Stroponiati was also visiting Blue Zones, regions of the world where people live exceedingly long lives, and thinking about ways to invest. Society and its frameworks are built around the idea that everyone retires from working at age 65 and will die about 12 years later, but those assumptions are going to be totally disrupted, she argues. People are going to live decades longer than they do now and that phenomenon will warrant innovations of all kinds.
“I got into the longevity space and I realized that living up to 120 is going to be the new norm. This is where I really connected the pieces and realized that there’s a huge [investment] gap,” Stroponiati told Institutional Investor.
In April, Stroponiati launched Brilliant Minds, a venture capital fund focused on pre-seed and seed-stage startups, across all sectors, that are redefining what it means to age. And she’s decidedly looking for entrepreneurs that have lived more than others. Brilliant Minds is also a fund specifically for founders over 50 years old, who Stroponiati said are best suited for starting the companies she wants to invest in.
She says there is a perception that older founders are boring; they don’t have exciting ideas, they are focused too narrowly on people close to their own age, and that they don’t appreciate the same problems and trends as other generations. Those biases are why the group has been wrongly ignored by many venture capitalists, Stroponiati adds.
“VCs out there are overlooking this market. They glorified youth all these years. And this started from the era where the developer was at the center. And in order to be a developer, you have to be young,” Stroponiati said. “Imagine all this experience [older founders have], all this wisdom and all these years. This is what I’m capturing.”
Founders over 50 can have the same enthusiasm young ones do and they offer things that only they could possess. Their years of experience in the workforce mean they are deeply knowledgeable about their industries. They aren’t just familiar with big problems, they have ideas about how to solve them and the experience to execute those ideas. Older founders can also come with expansive networks they can leverage for advice and hiring. For those reasons, founders over 35 are more likely to succeed.
More than 500 founders have reached out to Stroponiati since the spring. On average, they have been 61 years old and the median age of the group is 65. Out of the applicants, 21 percent are female, compared to the industry average of 13 percent in 2023. Almost 14 percent are women of color and 27 percent of all applicants are immigrants.
Sixty-four percent are first-time founders and most of those are highly specialized in a field they already work in. More than a third of the group are “serial founders” with experience in multiple sectors, including biotech, artificial intelligence, and fintech.
All eyes are on AI right now but Stroponiati said it’s too late to invest in the best venture opportunities. (Related: Goldman Sachs has also thrown cold water on AI.) The phase of leveraging AI tools in other businesses is already underway; 54 percent of Brilliant Minds applicants said they are leveraging AI technology in their solutions.
The energy and perspectives that young founders bring is legitimate and the older ones interested in Brilliant Minds acknowledge that: 13 percent of the startups have multigenerational teams, combining the strengths of each group.
“We are providing the capital, but we’re also opening the doors by giving the signal and we are creating a narrative and community that encourages the blend within generations,” Stroponiati said. “It enables people to start their entrepreneurial journey no matter their age.”
