Deshpande: Seasoned founders with families perform better than 20-somethings
Amol Deshpande · 20VC: How To Build Credibility with Investors, Employees and Customers, How To Determine When A Stretch VP is A Stretch Too Far and The Right Way For Founders To Think About Dilution with Amol Deshpande, Founder & CEO @ Farmers Business Network · Sep 21, 2018 · at 25:59
Amol Deshpande, founder and CEO of Farmers Business Network (FBN), addresses Silicon Valley stereotypes regarding founder age and family commitments.
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“By and large, you're better off having the benefit of experience. I mean, if I think about where I was in terms of the experience as I've had when I started FBN versus going back 12, 1314, 15 years to when I was first started a business, I is night and day in terms of my capabilities and my experience and my ability to deal with issues. So I think it's a huge benefit, and I think it's also misguided thinking to believe that people who are, say, in their thirties or forties or whatever can't start a business, or that people who have kids or whatever is gonna be harder to be an entrepreneur. You just gotta manage yourself. You gotta manage your day, and you gotta be committed to your trade. You can be committed to your family and your kids and everything else, and also be committed to being a great entrepreneur. It's very possible. You don't have to be a twenty-something single person to be an entrepreneur. You can be a mom, you can be a dad, be whatever, and be very successful.”
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“Well, we want to be the biggest company in the entire agriculture industry, and in order to do that, that's hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap that we have to build, either as a private or a public company. So I think in the next five years, I would…”
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“Whenever I hear talking to other entrepreneurs, oh, I might sell the business, or there'll be acquirers interested, I'm like, okay, well, you've Largely given up before you start.”
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“A good team who's working towards something in a small market will never create something big because it's going to be limited by the size of the market, right?”
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