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Not for the type of start-up we talk about on HN.
Why, is the risk somehow greater ?
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toughest part is dealing with sig. other who'd really like to have a nice meal every once in awhile and wonders aloud when she learns of your friends/peers who make six figures in "real jobs"... "Maybe you should go to law school?" cringe
maybe that's another reason that the mean age for founders is quite low. I mean if you're older and have dependents it's not the best time to throw your salary out the window and go it alone.
But I think you're right. MOST younger folks have no obligations. Relatively few older folks have actually managed to keep their burn rate low and accumulate wealth.
I think the 'peanuts' slide is an especially good point. Many people here seem to think that a startup is a fast-track to success, but it's not fast at all. It's a lot of work and sacrifice for years. Don't get me wrong... That time has some valuable lessons that will help you constantly for the rest of your life. But it's not easy. If you go into it with your eyes open, you shouldn't regret it.
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I think the mean age for YC founders is ~26 from what I gather.
That's because I don't think older entrepreneur usually would go for a YC like program. A lot of them have worked long enough to have savings to bootstrap and connections. At least that's my hypothesis.
it sounds like the talk would have been good, but i learnt nothing whatsoever from the slides (possibly because i've been through the startup experience, albeit as an employee, but it just seemed like the usual collection of platitudes)
thus the title: beating a dead horse :) the talk was for last year + mba students at HEC, and most of them never started / worked at a startup.
Observation: the topic of "think mobile and platforms" yes, but they're a plus (not the core of the thing.) Besides, relying too much in platforms are a bad idea (adds to the equation some risks parameters that are out of your control.)
The best is to start with the epicenter and iterate often keeping happy the people that will leverage you to ramen profitable.
Lastly, the epicenter should be human centered.
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I would rather not work with any developer who underestimates business guys at this level. Now, if you want to make the next "To Do" app, a dev can be fine, but if you want to do something useful, you will need a biz guy. I mean, this thinking from the dev side is exactly why companies today are full of crappy products (SAP, Windows, etc.).
Read the comment you replied to again; you misinterpreted it as attacking "biz guys," but it's actually commending those willing to get their hands dirty.
My point is that this is stupid, really stupid. There are tons of problems in the business world and they are tackled with old software from the '90 (Windows, Office, SAP, etc.). Web technologies have not even touched the corporate world.
Devs will never get the potential behind business problems because they hardly know about them. They need business people, they really do. And the business world needs them, because things are getting crazy, mining data with Excel...
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That's because I don't think older entrepreneur usually would go for a YC like program. A lot of them have worked long enough to have savings to bootstrap and connections. At least that's my hypothesis.
That may be so. I see the real value of YC as being mentorship from the team and the connections that follow rather than just funding and a stamp of approval for connections. Then again I haven't been in the business as long as most older entrepreneurs so I'll withhold judgement.
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who would you rather work with, a "biz guy" who has built a prototype that can't scale or a "biz guy" who has been talking about an idea for 3 months but doing nothing?
I would rather not work with any developer who underestimates business guys at this level. Now, if you want to make the next "To Do" app, a dev can be fine, but if you want to do something useful, you will need a biz guy. I mean, this thinking from the dev side is exactly why companies today are full of crappy products (SAP, Windows, etc.).
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If you took on student loans (incredibly common), you have 6 months before the collectors come calling and survival then requires an additional $100-$1000 income per month. Failure to pay or having insubstantial means to pay can result in substantially larger amounts of interest to repay, substantially longer repayment periods or garnished wages. Since there's no way to escape repayment a debt-encumbered individual h…
I know how you feel man, almost the same situation (no kid yet). My wife is finishing her Masters, I figure once she's done with that and has a secure job, it might be time for me to try something. It's risky but right now we make it with one salary. We've talked about it and she currently says that since I helped her with her dream she can help with mine. I think it's a fair trade. But I'd be stupid enough to go for…
I found it shocking that those two debt types are on the same level. The student loan one is probably limited to Federal/State funded loans. I imagine if you pay your College bill with a MasterCard then you could get around this.