I think there's selection bias for success stories of both young and middle aged founders. For middle aged founders, I feel like the ones that you hear about, i.e. having worked in the industry for a number of years before spotting a good opportunity, also need to be fortunate enough to be in a position for all those things to line up as well. For me, I couldn't see that ever happening down my career if I stayed in my finance job, only being shackled to my job by the high pay. The opportunity cost of quitting gets worse as you become more senior. But who knows, I could be wrong. In my case it also made it easier that I didn't really like my job and that my boss was an idiot.