A decade ago, Susie Crippen, a Los Angeles-based fashion stylist and occasional cabaret singer, thought her career was dead. At the age of 40 she had been working in a bar, before turning to a motley collection of stylist jobs. And though she dreamt of making it big in the fashion world, she doubted it could happen; at her age most of her contemporaries were already settled into careers. “I felt like I was going nowhere,” she recently explained to me. “I had no [health] insurance, no savings, I was drowning in $50,000-$60,000 of credit card debt. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life.” 10年前，洛杉矶时装造型师、偶尔当卡巴莱歌手的苏西•克莉朋(Susie Crippen)认为，她的事业已到尽头。当时40岁的她曾在一家酒吧工作，而后做过各种各样的造型师工作。尽管她梦想过在时装行业大展拳脚，但她怀疑自己能否实现梦想；和她年龄相仿的人事业都已定型。“我那时觉得自己的人生没有方向，”她最近向我解释，“我没有（医疗）保险，没有存款，我欠了5万至6万美元的信用卡债务。我不知道我该怎么过。”

But then Crippen’s luck – or mindset – changed. In 2003 she started dating Jeff Rudes, a textile expert, and persuaded him to join forces to create a company, J Brand, funded by friends and family, which would sell jeans for consumers who wanted streamlined, dark-hued styles. On paper, it seemed an unlikely venture; Crippen had never been an entrepreneur before, the fashion world was already full of jeans and J Brand’s so-called “skinny jeans” were priced at several hundred dollars. 然而，克莉朋的命运——或者说心态——随后发生了改变。2003年，她开始与纺织品专家杰夫•路兹(Jeff Rudes)约会，并说服他一起创建公司J Brand，资金由朋友和家人提供，该公司将向消费者销售紧身、深色风格的牛仔裤。从理论上来说，这家公司似乎希望渺茫；克莉朋之前从未当过企业家，时装界的牛仔裤品牌早已遍地都是，而且J Brand推出的所谓“紧身牛仔裤”(skinny jeans)售价高达几百美元。

But Crippen became obsessed with creating a “jeans empire” and her creative eye blended with Rudes’ business smarts. Within a few years, J Brand had exploded; so much so that when the pair sold it in 2010, the company was valued at $80m. It has since been resold for $300m; those skinny jeans turned out to be a gold mine. 但克莉朋对于打造一个“牛仔裤王国”着了迷，她的创意眼光与路兹的商业头脑完美融合，发挥出威力。在几年时间里，J Brand实现了爆炸式增长；二人在2010年出售该品牌时，公司估值高达8000万美元。后来，该品牌以3亿美元的价格转手；那些紧身牛仔裤最终变成了一个大金矿。

Just another tale of fashion world madness? Perhaps. But there is another aspect to this story that is striking and, to my 45-year-old eyes, heartening: Crippen’s age. These days, it is easy to assume that successful entrepreneurs are all young. We live in a world that worships youth culture, where celebrities and politicians seem younger by the day and where the entrepreneurs in the limelight – Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Branson or Steve Jobs, say – tend to have created companies in their twenties. Indeed, last month there was a buzz when Yahoo paid $30m to buy a start-up created by a 17-year-old London-based entrepreneur, Nick D’Aloisio; he owned some of the intellectual rights to an app that aggregates news. 这只是时装界另一个疯狂的故事吗？或许吧。但这个故事有着引入注目的另一面（在我这个45岁的人眼里也令人宽慰）：克莉朋的年龄。当今人们很容易假定，成功的企业家都是年轻的。我们生活的世界崇拜年轻，名人和政客看上去一天比一天年轻，众人瞩目的企业家，比如马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)、理查德•布兰森(Richard Branson)或史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)，一般都在20几岁就创办了企业。的确，上月当雅虎(Yahoo)出资3000万美元收购一家由17岁伦敦企业家尼克•德洛伊西奥(Nick D 'Aloisio)创建的初创企业时，曾引起轰动；德洛伊西奥拥有某种用于聚合新闻的应用的部分知识产权。

But while teenagers make good newspaper headlines, what usually gets ignored is that it is actually their parents’ generation – or people such as Crippen – who are the most active in terms of creating new companies in the US today. Take a look at the data. The Kaufman Foundation (which is dedicated to tracking entrepreneurship) recently analysed the age profile of entrepreneurs and discovered that 34 per cent of them were aged between 35 and 44 and 29 per cent between 45 and 54. Just 18 per cent were under the age of 34 – the same proportion as those over 55. “Entrepreneurship is concentrated among individuals in mid-career, ie between 35 and 44 years of age,” writes Dane Stangler, a researcher at Kaufman. 然而，尽管十几岁的年轻人创业成为头条新闻，但通常被忽视的事实是：在当今美国，在创建企业方面最积极的是他们的父母辈，即克莉朋这样的人。看看数据吧。致力于追踪创业数据的考夫曼基金会(Kaufman Foundation)最近对企业家的年龄状况进行了分析，结果发现，34%的企业家年龄介于35岁至44岁之间，29%介于45岁至54岁之间。只有18%年龄在34岁以下，而年龄超过55岁的企业家也是这个比例。该机构研究员达恩•斯坦格勒(Dane Stangler)写道：“创业集中发生在处于事业中段的人士中间，即35岁至44岁之间。”

Admittedly, in some sub-sectors the profile is younger: an MIT study of its graduates, for example, suggests that there are a lot of Zuckerberg wannabes in the computing world; the majority of IT entrepreneurs tend to be in their twenties, and overwhelmingly men. However, what is really notable is that if you look at all sectors of the economy, the age of entrepreneurs seems to be rising, not falling. Back in 2004, a study from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics found that the “bulge” age for entrepreneurs was 25-34, and this was echoed by other research in the 1990s. 应该承认，在一些行业领域，创业年龄比较年轻：例如，麻省理工学院(MIT)对其毕业生的研究显示，在计算机领域，有很多潜在的扎克伯格；大多数IT企业家往往是20多岁，而且绝大多数是男性。然而，真正引人关注的是，如果你把目光投向经济中的所有行业，你会发现，企业家的年龄似乎在上升，而非下降。回溯到2004年，创业动态跟踪调查(Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics)的一项研究发现，创业“高发”年龄介于25岁至34岁之间，上世纪90年代的其他研究也得到这样的结果。

. . . ……

Why this rise has occurred is not clear, since national data on entrepreneurship is very patchy (which is ironic, given how much politicians love to talk about entrepreneurs). It might reflect the overall ageing of America. It might stem from the economic squeeze, and the fact that many people today cannot get normal career jobs. A third possibility is that as careers have become more uncertain, it is more acceptable to take a mid-career risk. “This [pattern] differs from the conventional belief that entrepreneurship is mostly the province of the very young, who are presumably unfettered, willing to take risks, have low discount rates, and are undeterred from challenging established ways of doing things,” says Stangler. Or, as Crippen suggests: “With the economy the way it is, a lot of people no longer want to rely on others.” 企业家年龄上升的原因还不清楚，因为有关创业的全国数据非常零散（鉴于政客们多么喜欢谈论创业者，这颇具讽刺意味）。这或许反映了美国的整体老龄化。这也许源于经济低迷，很多人现在找不到常规工作。第三种可能是，随着职业变得更加不确定，在事业中段承担风险的做法更可接受了。斯坦格勒表示：“这种（模式）与传统看法不同，后者认为，创业主要是年轻人干的事，他们想必不受束缚，愿意冒险，机会成本低，对于挑战现有模式毫不畏惧。”或者，正如克莉朋所言：“鉴于目前的经济状况，很多人不再希望依赖他人。”

Either way, I find this trend – and Crippen’s tale – cheering. Of course, few of these mid-age entrepreneurs will ever enjoy J Brand’s success. And even Crippen’s story has not been smooth. Three years ago she left J Brand after splitting from Rudes. But these days she is using her experience to back the Trickle-Up foundation, which tries to encourage more entrepreneurship among poor women. And, at the age of 49, she is now engaged in a new entrepreneurial gamble with another brand. “What is tough about our society is that as women get older, they often seem less relevant. But as we get older we get more confident,” she observes. 不管是哪种解释，我认为这种趋势——以及克莉朋的故事——鼓舞人心。当然，这些中年创业者很少有人会享受J Brand那样的成功。就连克莉朋的故事也不是那么一帆风顺。3年前，在与路兹分手后，她离开了J Brand。但如今，她利用自己的经历支持Trickle-Up基金会，该机构致力于鼓励更多低收入妇女创业。现在49岁的她正用另一个品牌投入一场新的创业赌博。她认为：“我们这个社会的残酷之处在于，随着女性变老，她们往往被视为不那么相关。但随着我们年龄变大，我们变得更有信心。”

“At 30 I didn’t have the confidence to [start out] but at 40 I did. I just hope many more people can learn that too.” To which I would say a hearty “amen”; even – or especially – at a time when 17-year-old computer geeks are being feted for their deals. “30岁时，我没有信心（创业），但40岁时我做到了。我只希望更多的人能够明白这一点。”我想对此衷心地说上一句“阿门”；即使（或者说尤其）是在17岁电脑天才因为他们的交易而得到吹捧的时代。