Guide

Is your age really holding your project back?

You are 57. You have an idea. Thirty years of professional experience. And one small sentence returns as soon as the project becomes serious: ‘The bank will never back me at my age.’

The sentence sounds reasonable. It even lets you put the idea away without testing it. But what if that certainty were, at least in part, a fear before it was a fact?

A Bpifrance Le Lab survey conducted between November 2023 and February 2024 among 1,347 entrepreneurs, including 939 over the age of 50, puts a number on that fear. Among the entrepreneurs aged 50 or over who were surveyed, 64% consider that their age could be an obstacle with banks. The proportion reaches 68% among those over 60. This figure describes a reported perception. It does not describe a decision made by a banker.

The reversal appears in the same study. Bpifrance finds no statistically significant age-related difference in entrepreneurs' assessments of access to bank loans or investors. And when the study asks whether there is an age limit for entrepreneurship, 87% of senior entrepreneurs say no, compared with 93% of non-senior entrepreneurs. That is not exactly the same question, but these answers prevent us from reducing a project to a date of birth.

We should not make the survey say what it did not measure. The financing question was general and could be put to people who had not recently applied for a loan. It concerns broadly perceived or encountered difficulties, not a register of bank decisions. Age may also matter in some situations alongside the project's duration, risk, or succession. Nothing here therefore supports claiming that banks always finance senior entrepreneurs as easily as everyone else.

What the study does allow us to challenge is an overly simple conclusion: ‘I am over 50, so nobody will finance my project.’ The fear exists. It deserves to be heard. But it is not enough to describe what will happen to your application.

The useful question then becomes less comfortable and far more productive. Is your project clear enough for someone to understand the problem it solves, the people willing to pay, the money required, and the role you want to play? Your experience can inform those answers. It replaces neither the project's numbers, nor the skills you lack, nor a challenge from someone who is not already convinced.

You may not need to start with a company, a forty-page business plan, or a bank appointment. Start with your THING. Say in one sentence what you want to build, for whom, and with whom. Then put that sentence in front of other brains that can challenge it, complete it, and help it take shape.

Oscar Cadres is designed for that stage: bringing together a desire to build, experience, complementary skills, and execution tools. Not to promise you that age never matters. To prevent it from becoming the answer before the project has even been examined. What is your THING?