By David E. Gumpert

Up until the mid-1990s, the conventional wisdom among business-school academics was that those who waited until their early 30s to start a business were most likely to succeed. By that age, according to the the then-current reasoning, individuals would have enough meaningful work experience to improve the odds of achieving success. Moreover, it would be early enough in their family lives for still-modest lifestyle demands to handle pressures of meeting the challenge.

The proliferation of highly successful students and twentysomething entrepreneurs who emerged during the Internet boom tore a big hole in that model. Today, students taking entrepreneurship courses are encouraged by many of those same academics to think in terms of launching their own businesses while still in school or shortly after graduating.

OVER THE HILL?  It's not too much of a stretch to suggest that with the proliferation of entrepreneurship courses, clubs, and business-plan contests, if you haven't launched at least one business by the time you reach your early 30s, you are for all practical purposes "over the hill," at least according to the new conventional wisdom.

Is there really an ideal time in one's life to start a business? I suspect not. But I believe it's best to do so when you have a minimum of responsibilities and distractions and a maximum of confidence and energy, so you can focus single-mindedly on the endless challenges of running your own operation.

That being said, I've concluded that no matter how attractive the opportunity, or how old you are, there are often times when the moment just isn't right for launching a business. I've seen too many entrepreneurs dragged down by personal and family problems. I recently ran into a twentysomething I met a few years ago when I lectured about business planning at a Boston-area university. He had asked my advice about a business he was trying to launch, and we had kept in touch during the ups and downs, and eventual flameout, of that business.

PARTNERS NO MORE.  Now he was seeking to launch a new business related in important ways to his original one, but with some key differences. I was encouraged by his description of the concept, because it seemed he had learned important lessons from the failure. Being able to draw insight from past mishaps is one important predictor of future success.

More out of politeness than anything else, I inquired about this entrepreneur's personal life. I knew he was married and had fathered a son in the period between graduation and the demise of his previous business. I was amazed by where this question led.

The man and his wife had split, which wasn't necessarily a huge surprise. But their divorce had been so messy it was still going on after three years, with irregular court dates over custody of his son, along with disputes over child support and alimony payments. The battle had bled this fellow financially and, from the monotone in which he described this aspect of his life, I gathered it was bleeding him emotionally and spiritually as well.

The more I heard, the more convinced I became that, despite his own desires and the expectations of his peers and former teachers, this man should not try to launch a fast-growing business. He needed to straighten out his divorce, give his son some badly needed attention, and replenish his bank account, among other things. A challenging, decent-paying job would do more to enrich his life than another expedition into an area of uncertainty, risk, and expense.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING.  My young friend looked surprised when I gave him my assessment, but he didn't object. Indeed, he looked relieved. None of his friends and former instructors from school had been willing to tell him that starting a business at this stage in his life might be one of the worst decisions he could make.

This experience served as a reminder to me that launching an enterprise when an entrepreneur is in his twenties isn't necessarily the right time -- -- just as it wouldn't be wrong for folks in their forties and fifties. As encouraging as America's culture for entrepreneurship is, it can sometimes blind us to the incredible demands associated with starting an operation, especially one planned as a fast-growth business.

Just as there is nothing wrong with deciding that a particularly intriguing business idea might not fly, there is nothing wrong with concluding that the present and near future aren't the best times in your life to start a company.