The Best Entrepreneurs Are Older, Have Less Ego

What attributes does a founder need to make his or her startup thrive?

There are plenty of myths floating around Silicon Valley, augmented by the legends of hot-headed young Turks such as Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, that you need to be in your 20s with a rigid mindset and a hefty ego. But they're the outliers, according to an extensive survey conducted by one startup incubator.

For the last three years, the Founder Institute has had its applicants perform a battery of personality and aptitude tests. Then it tracked those applicants — more than 15,000 test-takers as their startups launched. The goal: see if any personality traits could be matched to revenue growth and market traction.

The results? As you can see in the infographic below, the young Turk thing is a myth. The best entrepreneurs are ones who work in their field first, gaining valuable real-world knowledge and experience for a decade or more. (We heard exactly the same thing from Google's startup acquisition guy).

Every year of life improves an entrepreneur's chances up until 40, but they don't diminish thereafter. Take heart, grey-haired founders!

Other takeaways seem a little more obvious: you need to be open-minded, flexible, able to pivot in a heartbeat. You need to be agreeable (there's some more proof for that 2007 bestseller The No Asshole Rule. You don't need IQ as it is traditionally measured; you do need the ability to recognize patterns.

And then there's ego. Clearly, entrepreneurs need some to succeed — but only as much as is required to not have your product be steamrollered. Narcissism is a no-no, as is any kind of emotional instability.

Does the Founder Institute's study reflect what you've seen in the startup world? Let us know in the comments.

Image from iStockphoto, Yuri_Arcurs