Jennifer Garner was 45, with decades of acting experience but no business or economics classes to her name, when she joined Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz as a cofounder of Once Upon a Farm, an organic baby food company they had launched two years earlier. The company has since expanded well beyond baby food into products for toddlers and older kids, gone public, and is now valued at $732 million. Garner, now 54, says the timing of her entry into business was less a limitation than an advantage.
The upside of starting later
"I'm blissfully not motivated by needing to be in charge," Garner said, explaining that the psychological freedom of joining a company later in life meant she never felt pressure to prove herself or dictate how things should run, the way a younger, more ambitious founder might. She said she still finds spreadsheets overwhelming and considers herself "the student in the room, always" rather than the expert, a mindset she credits to decades of work experience outside the business world before Once Upon a Farm.
Advice for the next generation
For women pursuing their own career or business goals, Garner's advice is to stay curious rather than rush toward leadership: "Keep following your interests. Keep being part of a team," surrounding yourself with collaborators instead of trying to be the sole decision-maker. Her path also lines up with broader startup data suggesting the most successful founders, statistically, aren't twenty-somethings: research cited alongside her story shows the top 0.1% of startups tend to be launched by founders around age 45, not in their twenties.