The founder who built a multi-million pound wellness brand started in her kitchen at 50 with a collagen formula and no business experience. Her blender consultant told her it was stupid. She proved him wrong in two weeks. 

We're not even at Trinny yet, this is Maxine Laceby. Neither are outliers, they're becoming the rule. 

According to a recent Global Entrepreneurship Monitor survey, women aged 50 to 64 are launching businesses at record rates, accounting for around 26 per cent of all new entrepreneurs, up from just 10 per cent a decade ago. What's more, they're nailing it. Numerous studies have found that founders in their 50s are more likely to keep a business afloat than those in their 30s. MIT researchers have said the chances of extreme success actually rises with age, peaking in the late 50s. 

Put simply, women in midlife and beyond are some of the most strategically positioned founders out there. Look at Vera Wang, Arianna Huffington and of course, Trinny Woodall, who started her skincare and make-up brand Trinny London aged 53. All are role-models for a new type of female entrepreneurship. 

After speaking to multiple women who have founded companies in their 50s, it's clear they aren't even starting late. This sort of language only underestimates their brilliance. What they're doing is spotting opportunities and grabbing them with both hands. When this type of approach is backed by decades of experience, networks established over the course of multiple jobs, and acres ofvresilience and self-knowledge it no wonder they're smashing business out of the park.
Starting a business in midlife also means that those rollercoaster early years can feel a little different: more deliberate, targeted and boundaried too, which suits a start-up culture that increasingly values purpose over aggressive expansion. 

As Sahar Hashemi OBE, who founded the Buy Women Built campaign aged 54, tells me: "As long as you remain curious and you're willing to learn, then age is completely irrelevant." 

There are any number of reasons for starting a business in your 50s, but it usually comes down to a moment in life that calls for a reassessment: being made redundant, caring responsibilities, an empty nest, menopause or simply being fed up working for someone else. 

Anne-Marie Lodge, known on social media as Really Ree, founded her Reeson cosmetics line aged 50 in 2023 after turning to beauty blogging when she was made redundant from her recruitment job. "I made a very conscious decision not to go back. Instead, I focused on what I genuinely loved, did courses and started to immerse myself in the industry from the ground up." Adding, crucially, "Having built a really strong network, it meant I had people around me who understood what I was doing and wanted to support it, which is invaluable when you are starting something new. I'm definitely more confident than ever. I know what I am doing, I know what I stand for and I know the level I want things to be at." 

Liz Sebag-Montefiore, co-founder of the career consultancy 10Eighty, explains that this mindset shift is something she sees often with 50-something founders. "They have the clarity and confidence to build something on their terms," she says. "There is less need for external validation and more focus on impact, purpose and legacy. That tends to create businesses that are not only commercially viable but also more sustainable in how they operate and lead people." 

"I think if I'd started my businesses earlier, I would have found it too difficult. I lacked experience, the contacts and the confidence to go out on my own," says Jane Kellock, who founded trend consultancy Unique Style Platform aged 53 in 2015, after a career in fashion. "If you're someone who feels as though you never truly reached your potential at work, then by this stage you are raring to go and used to being out of your comfort zone. It makes you very decisive." 

It would be easy to accept the narrative that women in their 50s are closer to retirement than reinvention. But the founders I spoke to articulated having just as much ambition as in their younger years, just in a more streamlined way. 

"I had something that I wanted to do for myself, after years of putting other people first," says former PR Nishita Assomull, who founded jewellery brand L'Atelier 73 two years ago, at 51, after taking time out to raise her twins. "In your 50s, you stop second guessing yourself all the time and you have gone through failures. You can draw on all that experience and use it to create resilience. I wasn't trying to please anyone else or prove anything to anyone, I just wanted to make something beautiful and not lose money." 

The clarity which can accompany this phase of life is overlooked as a superpower in the start-up world. It means knowing what matters and what doesn't, how much you will tolerate and what sort of people you want to work with. The result is businesses that are built with a more grounded, values-led approach, rather than chasing short-term wins. 

"Starting a brand in your 50s replaces the nervousness you get when you're younger with the power of being unapologetically candid," agrees Trinny Woodall. "You are freed from worrying about the opinion of others and the uncertainty of how things might turn out. Instead, you can embrace a level of fearless clarity that only comes when you stop caring what people think." 

We know that female founders struggle to access VC funding, receiving less than three per cent of the annual total. And the young founder myth could be working against those over 50. Serial entrepreneur Suzanne Noble, who founded tech start-up Frugl aged 53 and co-founded the Startup School for Seniors aged 59, was once told by investors that they didn't tend to give money to people who looked like her. As Sebag-Montefiore puts it: "The gap isn't capability, it's perception. Too often, founder narratives skew younger, which means investors risk overlooking a highly capable, commercially astute group." 

Laceby's experience bears this out. "My lack of experience allowed me to see the possible instead of the not possible," she says. For Laceby, as for so many of the women in this piece, that perspective was not a liability. It was the whole advantage. 

No wonder so many shudder at terms like olderpreneur or resent the idea that they're on the back foot when it comes to social media and AI, something many told me had been a challenge to master but an enjoyable learning curve. 

"The idea that there is a right age to start something is outdated," says Lodge. "It's not about starting late. It is about starting from a place of knowledge and confidence. That changes everything." 

It is also why AllBright everywoman have launched the Female Founder Collective, a year-long programme of events and editorial culminating in our Tide Entrepreneur Awards, designed to support founders at every stage and tackle the structural barriers still holding too many women back. Through the Collective, female founders have access to high-impact events, funding opportunities, expert insight and powerful networks.