starting
Encore founders: starting a company after fifty
What Census Bureau research says about founder age, prior industry experience and prior business ownership, and what a founder past fifty can plan around.
Insights / Starting out
Starting out desk
Where you begin depends on who you are: first-time, technical, non-technical, solo, student, second-career, corporate and global founders.
A first-time founder gets the short list of things to settle first. A technical founder meets selling, pricing and saying no. A non-technical founder sees what to own and what to delegate. A solo founder learns where a second look can come from. A student founder gets six questions to settle before starting.
A second-career founder turns domain knowledge into an idea. A founder inside a company sees how intellectual property and employment agreements bear on a venture. A founder outside the United States compares three examples of what changes. Two decisions get their own articles. One covers choosing a co-founder or deciding not to. The other covers moving from part-time to full-time. Each piece names its public sources and says what it cannot tell you.
- Dream 7 articles
- Build 11 articles
- Grow 6 articles
- Fundable 8 articles
- Starting out 14 articles
- Funding and capital 13 articles
- Legal and company basics 8 articles
- Team and hiring 9 articles
- AI-native building 9 articles
- Go-to-market 10 articles
- Pathways 12 articles
- Business models 8 articles
- Sectors 8 articles
- Operations and wellbeing 11 articles
Show the figures as a table
| Desk | Articles |
|---|---|
| Dream | 7 |
| Build | 11 |
| Grow | 6 |
| Fundable | 8 |
| Starting out | 14 |
| Funding and capital | 13 |
| Legal and company basics | 8 |
| Team and hiring | 9 |
| AI-native building | 9 |
| Go-to-market | 10 |
| Pathways | 12 |
| Business models | 8 |
| Sectors | 8 |
| Operations and wellbeing | 11 |
Illustration: World Enterprise Group Incorporated, drawn at build time from the articles published on this site.
Starting out
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Each dot is one article; the amber mark is the desk’s median.
Show the figures as a table
| Group | Article | Reading time |
|---|---|---|
| Starting out | Encore founders: starting a company after fifty | 6 min |
| Starting out | Founder age and growth: what the Census study of 2.7 million founders found | 6 min |
| Starting out | From first filing to first payroll: what the timing data says | 6 min |
| Starting out | Women and immigrant founders: what the Census and research data show | 6 min |
| Starting out | A non-technical founder building SaaS: what to own and what to delegate | 6 min |
| Starting out | A technical founder's blind spots: selling, pricing and saying no | 6 min |
| Starting out | Choosing a co-founder, or deciding not to | 6 min |
| Starting out | Founders inside a company: intellectual property and employment agreements | 6 min |
| Starting out | Founding from outside the United States: what changes for a remote founder | 6 min |
| Starting out | Part-time to full-time: deciding when to commit | 6 min |
| Starting out | Second-career founders: turning domain knowledge into a SaaS idea | 8 min |
| Starting out | Solo founders: where a second pair of eyes comes from | 7 min |
| Starting out | Student founders: the questions to settle before you start | 7 min |
| Starting out | What a first-time founder should settle first | 7 min |
Chart: World Enterprise Group Incorporated, counted at build time from the articles on this desk.
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starting
Founder age and growth: what the Census study of 2.7 million founders found
Mean founder age rises with how fast firms grow. What a Census Bureau study of 2.7 million founders measured, and what it cannot say about one founder.
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starting
From first filing to first payroll: what the timing data says
How many business filings become employers, and what a panel of 2004 startups earned by year eight. The public data on timing, and where it runs out.
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starting
Women and immigrant founders: what the Census and research data show
Census Bureau counts of women-owned and minority-owned firms, and peer-reviewed research on immigrant entrepreneurship, with the limits of each source.
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starting
A non-technical founder building SaaS: what to own and what to delegate
If you cannot write the code yourself, the decisions, accounts and records to keep in your own hands, and the work you can hand to a technical team.
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starting
A technical founder's blind spots: selling, pricing and saying no
Three kinds of work a builder can overlook when starting a SaaS company: selling before building, setting a price on purpose, and keeping an explicit no list.
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starting
Choosing a co-founder, or deciding not to
A co-founder is one way to cover missing skills, and the only one that makes someone an owner. How to list the work, test the fit and write things down.
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starting
Founders inside a company: intellectual property and employment agreements
If you start a company while employed, who owns what you build? Federal copyright and patent rules and one state statute, with questions for counsel.
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starting
Founding from outside the United States: what changes for a remote founder
Where you live, where the company is formed and where customers are can be three different places. Delaware, UK and EU VAT examples, with questions for counsel.
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starting
Part-time to full-time: deciding when to commit
Moving from a side project to a full commitment is a staged decision. How to write the criteria in advance, and what to leave to your own professionals.
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starting
Second-career founders: turning domain knowledge into a SaaS idea
Years in an industry give you a problem others cannot see. How to separate what you know from what you assume, and turn it into a testable SaaS idea.
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starting
Solo founders: where a second pair of eyes comes from
A solo founder makes every decision alone. Four sources of outside review, and a short session format borrowed from public-service assessments.
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starting
Student founders: the questions to settle before you start
Before you build a company while enrolled, find out what your school's policy says about ownership. Two real policies compared, and the questions to ask.
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starting
What a first-time founder should settle first
A checklist of decisions a first-time SaaS founder can settle early: the problem, the owners, the legal form, who owns the code, and who reviews your work.
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