On founder age and startups using AI

Solopreneurs of all ages worldwide: how are you rewiring your work habits with AI?

Photo by Sweet Life on Unsplash, cropped and slightly redacted

A guest article by

Luan Doan

on

Michael Spencer

’s AI Supremacy newsletter caught my eye this week.¹ It’s excellent, and worth a full read if you haven’t seen it yet. One point that caught my attention was an implicit assumption that solopreneurs and startups using AI would be ‘young’. I raised this point in a Note, which

Jenn McRae

and

Michael Spencer

engaged on. (Thank you both for the thoughtful comments that got this train of thought going tonight :)

The excerpt I restacked from the article: “Being adaptable, agile and being able to pick up from scratch and create a new business is going to become important and many young people in countries where higher unemployment rates exist, might be attracted to this path where the revenue ceiling is higher than a traditional job.”

My note:

“Excellent article, Luan Doan and Michael Spencer. These observations on startups and solopreneurs make sense and I appreciate the insights. I want to gently question the assumption that these startup founders are, in general, young.

Ageist bias in hiring and employment is pervasive. And it’s especially bad in AI roles; I cited a study on this in my Everyday Ethical AI book. Many people pushed out of the workforce by ageism in their 50’s and 60’s (and sometimes even younger for women, due to gendered ageism) are turning to solopreneurship and startup life. They (we) are using AI as well.

Solopreneur age distributions might vary quite a bit in different regions of the world, of course. I’m wondering if it might be a bathtub curve. Do any of you folks know of any reliable, recent world data on this?”

In the comment threads, I see two perspectives which seem contradictory, but I think both are valid:

• that small shops and solopreneurs of all ages are capitalizing on AI, and

• that AI-native businesses may come mostly from other demographics.

Solopreneur update on AI

I’ve completed 80+ interviews with people in a mixture of roles from solopreneurs to huge corporations. I’m not seeing any shortage of AI tool uptake from the one-person shops, regardless of age. And one of the studies I cited in my book Everyday Ethical AI: A Guide For Families & Small Businesses indicated that freelancers in the USA, UK, Canada, and Australia are benefiting more from AI than corporate workers.²

These people are solving problems for their customers and using AI freely when and where it fits their business, without corporate bureaucracy to impede them. They make their own AI tool choices (and take their own risks). They might not be “AI-native”, but I’d call this “AI-wise”. I’m a strong believer in defining the problem before choosing the solution, and AI isn’t a silver bullet that solves all problems. So this problem-first approach to when to use AI (or not) makes sense to me.

AI-native Startups

If we’re talking about people starting AI-native businesses with the specific goal of using AI as the core of their business, and building an AI-based platform or system to sell services to others, I could see that profile as being different.

Older workers are being pushed out of corporate life early by ageism, especially for AI-related roles.³ I would still posit that they could be well represented in that group of AI-native founders. Many of them (us) have been agile and already adapted to multiple tsunamis of technological change. Why would we stop now?

I also called this out in my book:

Assumptions that older people are tech-averse don’t even make sense. Many not only use AI, they’re often self-taught and power users. As Sheila Callaham wrote in Forbes last year:

“How is it so easily assumed that the generation of people who created the internet, computers and cell phones–and have adapted to the endless changes over the decades–suddenly stopped embracing technology?”⁴

Key success factors for software startups (and AI is software) include:

• building a solution for a problem domain the founder knows well, and

• knowing and using solid engineering practices.

Older tech workers often have both of those assets. (The recent fast launch and quick shutdown of the Neon app due to cybersecurity problems and data leakage is a great example of what can go wrong with an AI-native business when the engineering practices are skimped upon.)⁵

I know of excellent technical people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and beyond who are highly capable of starting and running AI-native businesses, and some are. They may be fewer because they prefer solving specific problems (AI-wise style, rather than AI-native). I’d be curious to see recent data, preferably global, on this. If you know of any, please pass it along!

Bottom Line

Whether their business is AI-native or AI-wise, freelancers and one-person shops of all ages can benefit from AI — used carefully.

I’d love to hear from any of you who are using AI for your business, or considering launching an AI-native startup. What are you doing with AI that’s working well for you, or not?

And if you’d like to share your AI stories and experiences with the world, I invite you to be featured as a guest on my “AI, Software, & Wetware” interview series. Read this guest FAQ and get in touch if you’re curious to know more!

Article References

For more references and coverage on these topics, see my Everyday Ethical AI book and the book website bonus materials.

1. How Solo Entrepreneurs Are Rewiring Their Work Habits with AI

2. (Reference 78 in Everyday Ethical AI) Upwork Study Finds Employee Workloads Rising Despite Increased C-Suite Investment in Artificial Intelligence, Upwork, 2024-07-23. The full study is available via From Burnout to Balance: AI-Enhanced Work Models.

3. (Reference 75 in Everyday Ethical AI) AI May Not Steal Your Job, but It Could Stop You Getting Hired, by Caitlin Harrington / Wired Magazine, 2024-01-02. Comments on Hilke Schellmann’s book The Algorithm.

4. (Reference 270 in Everyday Ethical AI) Age-Proofing AI: Why Companies And Employees Share Responsibility, by Sheila Callaham / Forbes, 2024-10-09.

5. https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/25/viral-call-recording-app-neon-goes-dark-after-exposing-users-phone-numbers-call-recordings-and-transcripts/