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Done with YC: Age Discrimination

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#21

Post by jimhi »

They generally give feedback on your application. There is likely something with your traction or potential market more than your age. I do agree with you there are some elements that make it harder as you get older.

That said:

https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to-founding-... The average age of startup founders is older than the press makes it seem.

I talk to people in each new batch of Y Combinator. The general consensus is that the average age of the founders seems like it is increasing as they fund harder and harder tech projects.

I coincidentally recommended a 58 year old founder about 18 months ago and they were interviewed.

Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#24

Post by tagami »

the-dude wrote: post #8
pseudolus wrote: post #6

From what I've read, YC also has a preference for companies with multiple founders. So being a solo probably didn't help.

He says as much in his post : > An established bias against solo founders And it is an age discriminator. It gets a lot harder to get a team together after a certain age. Peers already have obligations.

#1 question if you are an older founder (like me) why not bring in a cross-generational team? Perhaps bias can go both ways...

Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#25

Post by Gradient-Ascent »

cjamesd wrote: post #16

My father-in-law holds degrees from Stanford and Harvard, and has similarly struggled to find a job as he's grown older. When I referred him to an open position at my company, his un-edited resume matched almost perfectly, but the recruiter called him "too operational" -- and obviously had not dug in to who he was. I didn't push it but it seemed that his gray hair visible in his LinkedIn profile was a put off. I can'…

Young people work long hours for a small salary. IT is so fast changing. Train someone young and motivated to do the job with double the energy and for half the price. Someone old just learned the new and shiny thing for the 10th time and will now refuse and just be a grumpy old, expensive guy.

Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#26

Post by Barrin92 »

pseudolus wrote: post #12
the-dude wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says as much in his post : > An established bias against solo founders And it is an age discriminator. It gets a lot harder to get a team together after a certain age. Peers already have obligations.

Apparently the median age at which founders start "billion dollar businesses" is 34 [0] (the same article references a HBR study that says that mentions an age of 45 for "successful" entrepreneurs). That would also generally correlate to an age where one's peers have ongoing obligations (financial, family). [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/27/super-founders-median-age-of...

that's entirely circular reasoning because if there was a bias against older founders, then by definition successful founders skew younger.

Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#28

Post by projectileboy »

I absolutely agree that age discrimination exists in our industry, and it’s even worse in SV. But I really think you’re barking up the wrong tree here. Anytime you have an institution with single digit acceptance rates, you invariably are going to have truly excellent candidates who don’t make it in.

Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#29

Post by aabhay »

ericjang wrote: post #14

This is a sensitive topic, so I hope my question comes off as genuinely curious and not invalidating to the OPs experience, but rather a general question about how applicant selection ought to work. I wonder if the OP has some qualities that are weakly or strongly correlated with age (e.g. number of "older silicon valley institutions" one has worked at), and YC was selecting on those factors rather than explicitly fi…

If you are a gatekeeper for an industry where protected classes are inversely correlated with success, then you should strongly consider the negative effect your gatekeeping has on the world.

Re: Done with YC: Age Discrimination

#30

Post by webmaven »

tagami wrote: post #24
the-dude wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says as much in his post : > An established bias against solo founders And it is an age discriminator. It gets a lot harder to get a team together after a certain age. Peers already have obligations.

#1 question if you are an older founder (like me) why not bring in a cross-generational team? Perhaps bias can go both ways...

Having your team be cross-generational absolutely works. An age gap between co-founders is much more challenging, as it can create a whole host of expectation and alignment issues.
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