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Kairos, the Greek god of the opportune moment, embodies those fleeting instants when an opportunity can be seized. In entrepreneurship, there is no ideal age to start, but rather an alignment between clarity, desire, and the ability to manage uncertainty. The right moment is never obvious: it emerges when the will to act outweighs fear and one accepts to learn by moving forward.
In Greek mythology, Kairos is the god of the opportune moment. He is depicted as a winged young man with a lock of hair at the front of his head. If you are quick enough, you can seize it as he flies past. This fleeting deity reminds us of those rare moments in life when certain opportunities never come around twice.
Are entrepreneurs concerned by these sudden appearances of Zeus’s youngest son? When is the right time to take the plunge?
There Is No Age for Entrepreneurship
Even though the average age to start an innovative business is 38, many entrepreneurs launch ventures in their early twenties, while others take the leap after fifty, with a long professional career behind them.
For instance, Mehdi Cornilliet created several websites as a teenager and founded his first company, 2Empower, during his time at HEC Paris with an initial investment of just 2 euros. In contrast, Dr. François Pelen launched Point Vision Group after turning fifty, following a brilliant career in the pharmaceutical industry. Both companies became great successes, but under very different circumstances.
Introspection, Fieldwork, and a Business Plan
Starting and growing a business is a long-haul endeavor. It requires preparation and countless back-and-forths with the field in order to craft a genuine value proposition. Beyond the necessary market research and competitive analysis, one must also engage in honest introspection: am I ready to handle the pressure and make the sacrifices demanded at the outset?
Reflection on one’s ikigai, field immersion, and then the formulation and execution of a strategy built on these two pillars: the path is clear. But what about the moment of truth, deciding to take the leap, with all the risks it entails?
The Right Moment: Myth or Reality?
Jumping in too early exposes you to disproportionate risks, while asking yourself the right questions and making informed choices is relatively straightforward, especially when supported by programs designed to nurture this maturation process.
Conversely, starting “too late” may signal procrastination, or a form of impostor syndrome applied to entrepreneurship. Wanting everything to be “perfect” is the surest way never to act, while alternately blaming economic conditions, the absence of a “good idea,” a “promising sector,” or any number of excellent reasons to postpone the decision indefinitely.
While doubting is normal and even healthy, an entrepreneur must also know when to act, armed with enough information to “jump into the water and learn to swim,” as Robert Papin, founder of the HEC Entrepreneurs program, often repeated.
How Do You Know If You are Ready?
Each person has their own equation, especially their own risk appetite, that determines the “opportune moment” when they are ready to grasp Kairos by the hair.
If your desire to start outweighs your apprehension, and if you have enough support and information to reinforce your entrepreneurial project, then it is probably time to take the plunge.
The Combination of Three Factors
Beyond myths and legends, one never really knows when they are ready to undertake the entrepreneurial journey. At best, one senses it, often builds it, but this feeling is neither a flash of genius nor a checklist to be ticked. It stems from the convergence of three elements:
- A certain clarity about yourself and your environment.
- A strong enough desire to overcome your doubts.
- The ability to handle uncertainty without losing your way.
Clarity means both market analysis and self-knowledge: What real skills can I bring to the table? Am I ready to leave my comfort zone? Have I identified the resources I will need? Desire, meanwhile, acts as an engine. It is not a simple attraction to independence or novelty, but a will that persists through setbacks and adjustments. Finally, uncertainty is inevitable: creating an innovative company often means navigating without a map.
When Kairos Meets Preparation
Being ready does not mean anticipating everything but accepting to decide with incomplete information and to adjust course along the way. This degree of preparation is not measured by age, diploma, or even the technical maturity of a project. It is built through a triple effort: introspective, exploratory, and then strategic: reflection on one’s ikigai, immersion in the field, and the development of a coherent business model.
And then one day, the planets align: you feel capable of taking on the risk and giving life to a creation opportunity. The right moment is dictated neither by age nor by the market alone. It is that singular moment when you feel ready to learn by doing, and when opportunity presents itself. The moment, in short, when Kairos and preparation meet.
