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How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu

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Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#41

Post by jmartrican »

TekMol wrote: post #25
jath wrote: post #13

I presume one reason could be at 40 you dont make the mistakes you made at 20. I was 20 once and when i built a product i tried to load it with features/options. Now at 30 i make things as simple as possible. I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL. I don’t discuss scaling issues. I dont bother about 80% of the issues i used to discuss when i was 20. I’m better of now.

I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL. That is a language though, not a DB.

I assumed he meant MySQL, but now that you bring it up I wonder what other people thought he meant?

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#42

Post by jmartrican »

1ba9115454 wrote: post #7

The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once. If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

In the article Zuck is quoted as saying "Young people are just smarter" or something to that affect. If that's the view of the Valley as a whole, as the article alludes to, does the Valley think that people get dumber as they get older or that young people are just coming out of HS/college smarter?

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#43

Post by collyw »

jmartrican wrote: post #42
1ba9115454 wrote: post #7

The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once. If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

In the article Zuck is quoted as saying "Young people are just smarter" or something to that affect. If that's the view of the Valley as a whole, as the article alludes to, does the Valley think that people get dumber as they get older or that young people are just coming out of HS/college smarter?

Old people are wiser.

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#44

Post by JeanMarcS »

ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #14
jath wrote: post #13

I presume one reason could be at 40 you dont make the mistakes you made at 20. I was 20 once and when i built a product i tried to load it with features/options. Now at 30 i make things as simple as possible. I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL. I don’t discuss scaling issues. I dont bother about 80% of the issues i used to discuss when i was 20. I’m better of now.

You are right. The average entrepreneur could be 16 but the average successful will be around 40. I did the same mistake as you, adding as many features as possible so that users can use whatever they like. Now I think of it like adding as many wheels as possible to a car so that users can use whatever wheels they like. Keep things as simple and single functionality as possible. If you can't explain your startup in o…

Unfortunately, even some in their forties haven’t learned it yet.

I had a client around 2008-2009 (he was around 40 at the time and successfully launched several companies) who wanted a website/web app which basically was doing crowdfunding and videoconferencing (plus shared board and documents)

Yeah, I said basically and here we are getting a lot of functionality. I spare you the rest.

Needless to say after 2 years and a half of discussion and meetings and « what about we add that functionality ? », money ran dry and the whole thing never launched.

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#45

Post by beaconstudios »

jazoom wrote: post #37
kiloreux wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you really have to be that guy ? What he meant basically is using a relational database. Please refer to the HN guidelines before commenting. It strongly encourages to have comments that add value to the discussion.

I agree with TekMol that it's an important point. Nowadays we have new types of SQL databases emerging. Some examples: TiDB (distributed) CockroachDB (distributed) Crate (uses SQL but isn't even relational) They all use SQL. Picking between these and more established SQL databases is worthy of discussion. Heck, based on what I see on Hacker News, picking between the established ones generates a lot of discussion, usu…

one of the community practices here is that you should take the most charitable interpretation of what is written. This precludes nitpicking. It's clear that the OP was referring to "I just use SQL" in terms of picking the most mature/standard database approach (relational databases) instead of getting caught up in the quagmire of niche and specialist database schemas.

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#46

Post by beaconstudios »

jmartrican wrote: post #41
TekMol wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL. That is a language though, not a DB.

I assumed he meant MySQL, but now that you bring it up I wonder what other people thought he meant?

I read it as one of MySQL/MariaDB/PostgresQL/MSSQL. AFAIK they're the canonical implementations now. Sqlite is too but that's embedded, so it's targeting a different use case.

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#47

Post by zxcmx »

jmartrican wrote: post #42
1ba9115454 wrote: post #7

The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once. If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

In the article Zuck is quoted as saying "Young people are just smarter" or something to that affect. If that's the view of the Valley as a whole, as the article alludes to, does the Valley think that people get dumber as they get older or that young people are just coming out of HS/college smarter?

I think if he had been older when he made that comment it would have been more interesting.

Personally I just read it as “young person pretty sure that young people are smarter”.

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#48

Post by ganeshkrishnan »

sumedh wrote: post #26
ganeshkrishnan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it wasn't. Target market was North America. We are still focused on NA

well in that case I am assuming he wanted to say no but not to hurt your feeling he accidentally said "they don't invest in India" since you look Indian (I am assuming that based on your name) Or he could just be a jerk.

And that's the point I am making. VC's come up with reasons to say no and this one was the vaguest I heard.

I do look Indian and talk Indian ;)

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#49

Post by technofiend »

jmartrican wrote: post #42
1ba9115454 wrote: post #7

The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once. If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

In the article Zuck is quoted as saying "Young people are just smarter" or something to that affect. If that's the view of the Valley as a whole, as the article alludes to, does the Valley think that people get dumber as they get older or that young people are just coming out of HS/college smarter?

So has he set the date for his retirement, yet? I mean the board should have his ouster lined up by the time he hits 30, right? Oh crap! He's already 34. Nice knowing you Mark but it's time to move over, old man.

Re: How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

#50

Post by detaro »

jmartrican wrote: post #42
1ba9115454 wrote: post #7

The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once. If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by. So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

In the article Zuck is quoted as saying "Young people are just smarter" or something to that affect. If that's the view of the Valley as a whole, as the article alludes to, does the Valley think that people get dumber as they get older or that young people are just coming out of HS/college smarter?

If you look at the linked source article, it seems like it's mostly "hire young people, they'll be more willing to go all-in on work" (vs people with distractions like kids or ideas about work-life balance)
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