Ode to the "Older" Entrepreneur • Hacker News Board

Re: Ode to the "Older" Entrepreneur

#11

Post by Vivtek » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 12:17 AM UTC

I think it's probably because to take that plunge and go all-out with a venture (which is how most tech startups work) you can't really have kids and a wife and a mortgage and the need for health insurance weighing you down and dividing your attention.

Now that it's becoming more practical to bootstrap yourself into existence on the side - primarily because of cloud resources, but also just because it's getting easier in terms of support structure - I think we're going to see more older entrepreneurs.

I mean, I'm 44 and I'm only now starting to get interested in startups.

[I tell my wife similar things about physics when she gets despondent about not getting ahead in the field fast enough. There, I really think that the daily grind of academia, plus the terrible burden of having a professional reputation, is what makes it impossible for older folks to contribute the big stuff.]

Re: Ode to the "Older" Entrepreneur

#12

Post by brc » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 12:24 AM UTC

My take on this applies to just about any field with regards to entrepreneurship. A successful entrepreneur doesn't emerge until the person 'gets it'. What I mean by 'gets it' is an esoteric combination of these factors:

-realization that life is not a dress rehearsal

-determination to be successful in their own right, and to not spend the rest of their lives asking other people for permission to trade their precious time for wages

-awakening that most barriers to success are mental

-development of absolute belief that they alone are responsible for how they feel, how they act, and their success or failure at anything.

The big difference between this and other fields is the lower physical barriers to entry for young people. There are no licences required, no physical assets to acquire, no permission needed to build software. On top of that there is a positive feedback loop where other people are willing to listen to a young software entrepreneur, because young software entrepreneurs have had success in the past. If other industries had these low barriers to entry, I would expect to find young successful people across other industries.

The age distribution I think is just the varying age at which people 'get it'. For some young people, they come out of the gates with this belief system, either innate or cultivated by their parents. For others, it requires maybe starting a family and accepting the responsibility of the same, maybe getting fired from a job, maybe a mid-life crisis or a health scare. The reasons are varied but the outcome is similar - a shifting of focus onto what is important. Once the shift of focus happens and clear thinking emerges, the entrepreneur can emerge - at any age.

Re: Ode to the "Older" Entrepreneur

#13

Post by jaltucher » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 12:36 AM UTC

As an "older" entrepreneur (I'm 43), I can say a few things:

A) Its harder to put all of my eggs in one basket. When I was younger i could afford the time to do that (and had several successes doing that). Now, its more important for me to diversify my "entrepreneurship"

B) the way I do that is by finding the qualities that I had (in other young entrepreneurs) and investing in them at low valuations (so I feel as if I have the equity of a founder).

Most entrepreneurs I know in their 40s tend to do the same thing. Its a little bit easier (less late nights programming when I have two kids) and almost as fun and just as lucrative. Ultimately, my "business" now is my investments.

Re: Ode to the "Older" Entrepreneur

#14

Post by IDisposableHero » Wed, Feb 23, 2011, 12:54 PM UTC

edw519 wrote: post #8

If you look at a variety of fields, you see that people within certain age groups tend to do better. Most productive ages for: Gymnasts: teens, Mathematicians: teens to late-20s, Physicists: early 20s-early 30s, Biologists: late 30s-40s, Literary authors: 40s to 60s. I prefer a binary distillation: "Physical" - best from 18 to 40, peaking around 30 (with some exceptions) "Mental" - best from 13 to 90, peaking almost…

The data suggests to me that "mental" has at least two, narrower peaks - the Mathematician/Physicist peak (maths are theroetical physics are quite similar in practice) is quite distinct from the Novelist's peak, and that therefor they exercise different mental abilities.