His medical device is aimed at avoiding urinary tract infections that are common at hospitals. Kinsey says he’s raised money from “friends and family, small angels” to fund a venture that has four employees.
While the company to date has only “a couple of small sales, not anything substantial,” Kinsey said he’s optimistic hospitals will adopt the device. “We feel like we have a viable product that can address a serious problem,” he said.
Success is far from a sure thing.
Lost Job
Bruce Fischler, 63, of Plantation, Florida, lost a housing- related job in 2012 after home prices slid in the region and foreclosures surged.
He formed a drug company with the hopes of commercializing a university patent for a treatment for osteoporosis, only to find that running clinical trials would take an “enormous amount of money,” which will probably be impossible to raise.
“The company is dead in the water,” he said. “I am going to go back and take a J-O-B.”
Yet for many older employees the options provided by the labor market are limited, say entrepreneurs.
“There is an age bias that is out there,” said Dale Sizemore, 61, who created Community Approvals Inc., an Alpharetta, Georgia-based company that assists filmmakers in getting government permission to film on locations. “It is a discouraging environment.”
Having lost his job in September 2010, when the company he worked for was sold, he put out resumes and talked to job recruiters. Sizemore said he didn’t find anything that suited his skills, which had been marketing software.