Lorne Jenkins returned to his hometown Longmont about two years ago after working in foreign exchange in London, with a startup idea: the financial literacy app Mini Money Management, or MMM. Though the 26-year-old’s startup has legs to it now, his status as a young first-time founder came with advantages and barriers.
“Not having been in business for a long time, I just didn't really know what to expect,” Jenkins said about founding MMM. “But I also think that that's a huge pro.”
Jenkins isn’t alone in feeling like his age benefits and challenges his success in the startup world. According to a May survey commissioned by Herbalife Nutrition and conducted by OnePoll, about half of Gen Zers and Millennials — ages 18 through 40 — fear they won’t be taken seriously because of their age. Half of respondents also felt they had advantages over older generations including less fear of failure, adaptability to technology and being more likely to bring fresh ideas to the table. The survey received 25,000 respondents across 35 countries.
Jenkins was inspired by a game by his mother Ellen Ross, who is co-founder and chairman for MMM. She gave Jenkins and his sister a “salary” when they were kids and they used fake money to learn how to save and spend.
MMM is an online tool for educators and families to teach children how to budget, earn an income and keep up with expenses. Spreadsheets, printable faux dollars and other resources are offered through the program. The financial literacy startup also leads courses for nonprofits and other organizations.
The defining obstacle for getting MMM off the ground was that it was something new and facing the skepticism of investors older than Jenkins.
“The first six months all I did was just spend time telling people my idea and kind of getting ripped apart, like ‘That's never gonna work. That's dumb. That's stupid,’” Jenkins said. “I think I had to grow up real quick because you take a little bit of that to heart.”
One of the greatest challenges for first-time entrepreneurs is experiencing the “mental whiplash” of a business concept’s reception, said Jennifer Ferguson, a Longmont business owner of the party bus Wonder Tours and BricksRetail — a Main Street store that sells locally made items.
Ferguson has worked with entrepreneurs of all ages and experience through Boomtown Accelerators — a Boulder program meant to launch early startups. She also helped organize the first two years of Longmont Startup Week, an annual week of events which is set for its eighth year on July 26.
A common trait Ferguson has seen among young entrepreneurs, that works in their favor, is they are more flexible and not as risk-averse. If they can maneuver easily and learn from their failures, then they can succeed on the less cautious road, she said.
“True entrepreneurship in my opinion, is the people who in the face of that adversity and the challenge, think and continue to believe they will make something happen,” Ferguson said. “And those are the people who make it happen.”
Ferguson said when startup founders are looking for seed money, they should consider who they are pitching to. Knowing their audience will help them gain investors.
Jenkins remembers going to meet up with a family friend to pitch MMM to after being shot down five times, once being laughed out of a potential investor’s office. He was feeling down, but his friend encouraged him.
Today, MMM has secured $200,000, with the first $50,000 raised through family and friend investments and the rest through an angel investor. Jenkins also won the first place prize of $1,000 at Longmont’s EforAll’s first pitch contest in 2019, also going through the organization’s business accelerator.
Between March 2020 and 2021 MMM has taught more than 750 students through its classes or others using the app, Jenkins said.
“At a young age when you're going through this journey you're gonna take your bumps and bruises,” Jenkins said. “You're going to have your highs and you're going to feel great. You're going to have some pretty low lows, or like it feels like you can't do it. You have to kind of work through those things.”
Peter Adams, executive director of the Rockies Venture Club,or RVC, said young entrepreneurs shouldn’t feel discouraged by their age. RVC is the longest-running angel investor group and is a nonprofit membership that connects entrepreneurs and investors through events and accelerators. Adams said there are about 15,000 Colorado members who participate in RVC’s programs and events.
“Don't be slowing yourself down in your mind, because we're not. We're thinking about somebody who’s 25 the same as somebody who's 45 or older,” Adams said.
He added that RVC’s investment portfolio is split about evenly between first-time startup founders and founders who have started one or more companies before.
Adams understands the unique experiences young entrepreneurs go through from his own career, forming one of his first companies User Friendly Computers Inc. in Boulder in his mid-twenties. He said he learned as he went, and as he got further in his career he realized that everyone is still figuring it out, and there’s comfort in that.
Adams advises entrepreneurs to come up with exciting new concepts, but keep in mind that investors need some insurance that it will work.
“There are so many contradictory balancing things that somebody needs to do to be successful in raising funding and getting a startup going, and one is on the one hand you have to be totally innovative, something different and unique in the market. Also, you need to be something that investors can pattern match against,” Adams said. “You want to both look like something that they can recognize and see a pattern they like, but also be unique.”
Adams said something most first-time founders don’t realize is that angel investors and venture capital companies want to know what the startup’s exit strategy is. Before pitching to their first customer, the investor, they need to think about how they may get the startup acquired down the road.
