First Time Founders - can they succeed?

A question a lot of budding entrepreneurs think when they start out. During my first attempt at starting up, I used to feel that I am young and have no experience in building a business. Will I be able to succeed competing against people with previous startup experience?

I feel that starting up the first time has it's disadvantages but also has a host of advantages. An untested entrepreneur will have no baggage, i.e. he will not have any bad experiences to be careful about and will not tend to over analyse things. He would be energetic about his/her idea and will keep on experimenting. His lack of experience may lead to him/her wasting some time and resources on some experiments, but overall having no previous baggage will ensure he keeps on pushing hard at all things he feels will deliver. Entrepreneurship is a lot about gut feeling as well, and a first time founder can use this better than an experienced one.

Quoting an article based on a survey by Shasta Ventures, they found that

'Surprisingly, it is most often untested founders, rather than experienced entrepreneurs, who are at the helm of large, fast growing companies. Three-out-of-four of the companies in our survey, of how billion dollar companies look like at the Series A, were built and run by people who were doing it for the first time.'