The Truth About Starting a Business Young: What Jeff Bezos Really Thinks

Everyone loves an underdog story. You see headlines about college dropouts who became billionaires—Figma’s Dylan Field, Scale’s Lucy Guo—and it feels possible. It feels like the path to success. But Jeff Bezos wants you to know something important: these are exceptions, not the rule.

The Data Tells a Different Story

Here’s what actually happens when people start companies too early. A study by Clifford-Lewis Private Wealth looked at the fastest-growing new businesses in the top 0.1% of their class. The finding was striking: the average founder’s age at startup was 45 years old. Think about that. Not 25. Not 30. 45.

The same research suggests that entrepreneurs have significantly higher success rates at 30 than at 20. That’s a 10-year gap that makes a measurable difference.

Yet the media celebrates the prodigies. It celebrates people like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs—all of whom rejected the traditional path of college and climbing the corporate ladder. Their stories are exceptional precisely because they’re rare.

What Jeff Bezos Actually Did (And Why It Matters)

At Italian Tech Week in Turin during October 2025, Bezos addressed this directly. When asked about the prodigy entrepreneur ideal, he didn’t shy away from the contradiction. “It is possible to be 18, 19, 20 years old, drop out of college and be a great entrepreneur,” he acknowledged. “We have famous examples of that. But these people are the exception.”

Then he shared his own story—which most people get wrong.

Bezos didn’t start Amazon at 22. He didn’t drop out to chase a dream. Instead, he graduated from Princeton in 1986 and spent a full decade working for other companies. He worked at Fitel and Bankers Trust on Wall Street. Then, in 1990, he became the youngest-ever vice president at the hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He didn’t launch Amazon until 1995, at age 31.

Why does this matter? Because those 10 years of working for others directly improved Amazon’s chances of success. Bezos learned how to hire well. He learned how to interview. He learned how to lead a growing organization. He understood decision-making processes, scaling challenges, and operational fundamentals. When he finally started his company, he wasn’t learning these things—he was applying them.

The Real Competitive Advantage

This is the insight most aspiring entrepreneurs miss. Your twenties aren’t the time to prove yourself. They’re the time to prepare yourself.

Bezos’ advice to young people today is simple: “Go work at a best-practices company where you can learn a lot of basic, fundamental things.” He emphasizes that “there’s still lots of time to start a company after you have absorbed it.”

What you learn at a great company teaches you what pure talent and inspiration cannot. You learn how things should be done from day one. You make better decisions. You avoid costly mistakes. You know how to focus on growth instead of survival.

When Bezos took Amazon public in 1997, just two years after launch, the IPO price was $18 per share. That wasn’t luck. That was the result of a decade of preparation compressed into a company with the right foundations.

The Uncomfortable Truth

The uncomfortable truth is that the most successful entrepreneurs often didn’t start young—they started prepared. Age 30, 35, even 40, is not too late. It’s often exactly right. By then, you’ve seen how organizations work, how markets behave, and how to lead under pressure.

Your twenties offer something more valuable than a startup: real education. Not the classroom kind, but the hands-on, high-stakes, learning-from-mistakes kind. The kind that transforms talented people into founders who actually succeed.

That’s not the story that makes headlines. But it’s the story the data tells. And it’s the story Jeff Bezos is still telling.