Indonesia’s Most Untapped Startup Resource? 40+ Year Old Founders With a Track Record
In theory, venture capital is about backing great founders with big ideas. In practice (at least in Indonesia), it’s increasingly about who you know, where you studied, and whether your dad once sat on the board of a palm oil company.
In Indonesia, being a seasoned professional with 20 years of hard-won experience and a track record of actual business success earns you polite silence, rather than a foot in the door. So, you’ve built teams, and expertly handled downturns? But have you interned at McKinsey & Company? Did you speak on a panel about "innovation ecosystems"? No? Next!
Sadly, the startup ecosystem keeps failing for precisely the reasons these older, overlooked founders could help fix. But instead of treating them as the cure, VCs see them as outdated. Meanwhile, a well-timed round of golf and a conversation about where you went to business school can still be the most effective pitch you'll ever make.
The Cult of Youth is a Costly Addiction
Let’s start with a disclaimer: some young founders are brilliant. They're visionary, driven, creative, and absolutely deserve to be taken seriously. The issue isn’t with them. It’s with the ecosystem that treats youth, a Stanford sweatshirt, and a summer at Bain & Company as a substitute for competence. At some point, “potential” stopped being a bet and started being the entire thesis.
VCs in Indonesia, (and if we're being honest) across Southeast Asia, have developed a taste for a specific founder mold. Think: freshly minted from a prestigious school and usually under 30.
“We’re redefining fintech for the underbanked Gen Z crypto-curious middle class.”
Oook. But have you ever run payroll? Managed a crisis? Survived one quarter without a down-round panic?
What we’re seeing is more cosplay than innovation. Everyone is playing the part, but few are actually doing the work.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the pitch room sits someone who’s scaled actual operations, survived more than one economic downturn, and has been in boardrooms where decisions cost real money. However, they’re dismissed as too slow, too traditional, too "uncool."
Raise funds.
Burn funds.
Pivot.
Burn more funds.
Layoffs.
Slap a "strategic realignment" press release in Tech in Asia
It's inefficient. Delusional. We’re actively ignoring the people who’ve proven they can run sustainable, scalable businesses in favor of founders who are learning on the job, in public, with millions of investor dollars.
If youth is a bet, then experience is an asset. So why are we pretending it's a liability?
The Forgotten Founder Profile
Let's talk hypotheticals. Imagine, a 47-year-old ex-COO of a regional logistics firm. She’s built teams, optimized margins, and survived market crashes. She knows how to scale in the mess of real-world constraints, labor shortages, vendor disputes, and currency fluctuations. She’s ready to build a company centered around operations and outcomes. One that makes money and makes sense.
Naturally, she can’t get a meeting.
Not because she’s unqualified. But because she doesn’t fit the mold.
She didn’t go to the right school.
Hasn’t posted a viral LinkedIn thread about the “founder grind.”
Doesn’t mention “AI-enabled” or “hyperlocal” every second sentence.
Worst of all, dares to think about.. profit!
This is the profile VCs should be tripping over themselves to fund:
Operational depth.
Market credibility.
Rolodexes full of potential customers, not just followers.
Realistic expectations of growth, burn, and return.
Instead, capital keeps flowing to founders who’ve never managed more than a group project.
Older founders can think big, but they’ve also seen the cost of thinking big without thinking straight. They bring a grounded vision. The ecosystem keeps overlooking them not because they’re lacking, but because they’re inconvenient to the hype machine.
Ironically, they may be the only ones capable of building what the hype keeps promising.
Why Betting on Experience Is Safer Than It Looks
Venture capital loves to talk about risk. Risk-adjusted returns. Risk appetite. Risk mitigation strategies. Yet strangely, the riskiest bets in the game keep getting the green light: young, untested founders with bank accounts full of someone else’s money. The founders with no operating experience, no crisis scars, and no evidence they can lead a company beyond the first hype cycle are somehow viewed as safer than the person who’s actually done it before.
Meanwhile, the experienced operator who’s managed cash flows, led teams, and weathered three economic slumps is branded "too risky." Why? Because they're older. They might want weekends off. They might ask questions like, “what’s our path to profitability?” instead of “how do we 10x this before Demo Day?”
It’s absurd. Ask yourself: who’s better positioned to guide a company through turbulence. The exec who’s made payroll during a currency devaluation, or the founder who learned leadership by organizing university hackathons?
Older founders have already faced the fire and lived to tell the tale. They don’t chase vanity metrics. They understand trade-offs. They know when to scale, and when to stop the bleeding. That’s not a liability; that’s risk management.
They’re disciplined thinkers, not conservative ones. They don't need to fake urgency because they've lived the consequences of moving too fast. They’ve made mistakes, owned them, and built back wiser, sharper, and more efficient.
Funding seasoned founders is a hedge against naivety. The real risk? Continuing to ignore the grown-up in the room.
What If the Fix Isn’t More Innovation—but Better Execution?
The idea well is overflowing. Every pitch deck promises to disrupt, democratize, or decentralize something. You can’t swing a cat in Jakarta without hitting a “revolutionary” idea to optimize something using blockchain, AI, and the power of community. Yet most of these startups don’t make it past their second fundraising round, or their first real operational hiccup.
The problem isn’t innovation. It’s execution.
Founders get funding for a prototype before they’ve figured out how to get a product from point A to point B. Startups flame out not because the ideas were bad, but because they were run like college group projects with VC money as the group member who does all the work.
Now, enter the older founder, who’s managed a real supply chain, who’s written employee handbooks, who understands what it takes to make a logistics company function when half your fleet are stuck in rainy-season traffic.
They don’t need to reinvent the wheel, because they know how to make the damn wheel turn profitably.
Imagine what would happen if:
VCs set up fellowships or micro-funds specifically for 40+ founders.
Incubators brought in mid-career professionals and paired them with product-savvy partners.
The default funding question wasn’t “how big is your TAM?” but “how well can you execute in this market?”
Indonesia doesn’t need another food delivery startup. It needs leaders who can build businesses that survive contact with reality.
Venture capital talks a big game about betting on outliers, but in practice, it just keeps placing the same bet over and over. It’s a strange kind of innovation theatre, where everyone plays the part of the visionary disruptor, but few are actually equipped to run a functioning business.
And in the rush to fund the next headline-making wunderkind, VCs have quietly overlooked a demographic that could reshape the startup landscape: experienced professionals who know how to execute, manage risk, and build sustainably. They’re not tweeting about hustle culture. They’re busy solving actual problems like logistics, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
These founders don’t need to be taught how to lead. They’ve done it. They don’t need to learn fiscal responsibility. They’ve lived it. What they need is the same thing every other founder gets: a shot.
Indonesia is short on grown-ups, not ideas. It needs founders who’ve seen failure, learned from it, and know how to avoid it the next time around. So maybe the boldest thing VCs can do now is back the people who know how to build when the trends fade, not chase the next trend.
Maturity isn’t boring. It’s overdue.