Apparently, the best age to start a business is 40. Which I love, for no reason in particular. 👀 At first, I thought this was AARP propaganda!

But then I thought about it for a second, and it became so obvious. By the time you're mature in your career, you've made real mistakes, you've managed people and built real relationships. All of the time you spent building a career isn't lost when you start a business, it's the investment you're cashing in on.

So much of entrepreneurial success is about time travel. How fast can you get from point A to point B. How quickly can you compress the distance between where you are and where you're trying to go.

The college dropout myth would have you believe the shortcut is youth. And sure, a handful of people built billion-dollar companies that way, but those are the exceptions to the innumerable companies built by grown-ups.

The reality is the shortcut was always who you know, who knows you, and most importantly, who is saying your name when you're not in the room.

Speaking of which, I’m hosting a founder dinner in NY on April 29th, and there are a few spots left. RSVP to save your seat at the table.

I worked in venture capital before I started Guava and it wasn't that the founders I wanted to serve were missing something. They were just missing! The rare Black founder who was in the room had usually spent years making themselves impossible to ignore. And even then, someone still had to open the door.

That's an inefficient shortcut. Not a shortcut at all, actually. 

Success is always relational. The right relationships compress time, the ones that get you the warm intro, the right advice, and the ones that vouche for you. That’s not equally distributed for the founders I’ve been building for. 

My question for you this week is, who in your corner is helping you shrink time? Who has relationships, access, and experience that get you closer to your goal, faster?

Talk to you soon!

Kelly

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