The accelerator for founders over 40 fills its first cohort

The accelerator that admits only founders aged 40 or older has filled its first cohort of twelve companies, with an average founder age of 47 and eight of the twelve already profitable.

For Jonas Whitfield, who founded her first company in 2015 and sold it four years later, the lesson is familiar. "Growth hides mistakes," she said. "When it slows down, you find out which decisions were good and which ones you just got away with."

The deal was approved after the parties agreed to divest two overlapping business lines, a condition regulators had signaled early in the review. Supporters called it a pragmatic compromise; critics said it left the hardest questions about market concentration unanswered.

Northwind Energy will hold a briefing for analysts next month to walk through the numbers in more detail. Management has promised a first progress update alongside its third-quarter results.

Who got in

Similar programs at rival firms have produced mixed results. In one well-known case, adoption exceeded projections within a year; in another, integration problems pushed the expected benefits back by almost eighteen months.

A survey of 400 mid-sized companies by Harrow Street Capital found that 58 percent plan to increase their technology budgets next year, the highest share since 2021, even as most expect overall spending to stay flat.

Customers have welcomed the change. "Anything that shortens the time between order and delivery is good for us," said Jonas Whitfield, whose distribution business employs about 120 people and works with Northwind Energy in three regions.