Phil Knight's Age When He Founded Nike
Phil Knight was 24 years old when he co-founded the company that became Nike in 1964, initially operating as Blue Ribbon Sports according to Forbes. He was born on February 24, 1938, which means he started the brand in his mid-twenties after graduating from the University of Oregon and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Knight co-founded the company with his former track coach Bill Bowerman, and the first operations were run out of Knight's car trunk while he was still in his mid-twenties per Nike's official history page. The company was formally incorporated as Nike, Inc. in 1978, when Knight was 40 years old, but the founding date is consistently traced back to the 1964 partnership.
Early Career and Education Before Nike
Knight earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from the University of Oregon in 1959 and an MBA from Stanford in 1962 per Bloomberg executive profile data. He launched his career as an accountant and later taught at Portland State University before pursuing the import business that led to Blue Ribbon Sports.
First Business Steps
In 1963, Knight traveled to Japan and secured a distribution deal with Onitsuka Tiger, now ASICS, to sell running shoes in the United States as noted by Britannica. He placed his first order of Tiger shoes while he was 25, and the initial shipments arrived just before he turned 26, marking the start of the Nike supply chain.
Nike's Growth From a Small Startup
By the early 1970s, Blue Ribbon Sports had grown from a small startup into a major athletic footwear distributor, and Knight was still in his early thirties during the brand's rapid expansion phase per SEC filings for Nike, Inc.. The company introduced the Nike brand name and the Swoosh logo in 1971, when Knight was 33 years old.
Knight stepped down as CEO in 1999 at age 61, after decades of leading the company through global expansion as reported by Forbes. Today, Nike is one of the most valuable publicly traded brands in the world, and its origin story is frequently cited in business case studies about young founders building global companies.