Excellent point!Add to this the fact that these old guys may well have a better understanding of what the customer wants and perhaps is prepared to pay for any service. Everybody is focusing on Google but how many like them tried and failed? You won't read about them. Someone who starts a business with his family attached to him thinks twice about each move and turn as any mistake may seriously affect not just his personal livelihood but his family's as well.A young twenty something who doesn't make it can always find a career afterwards something which is not necessarily the case for a forty something.
When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
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Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#12Word to the wise. Discount the old guys at your own peril. Discount anyone at your own peril. These days, things are often not as they appear.
Classism, ageism, racism...all prejudices are to be avoided, regardless of the era.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#13"..showed that the average founder of a high-growth company launched his venture at age 40." Have not read the paper but this sounds like survivor-ship bias. The number you'd want is what percentage of old guy companies succeed.
Not to derail the conversation but when did 40 become 'old'? I'm just a decade and a half from that age and that isn't long. I'd probably consider 60 or 70 to be old. Not 40.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#14my first thought: no shit? why do you think serial entrepreneurs find it so much easier to raise money? PG wrote an essay on it, and the startup learning paradox. You're likely to fail when you're young because you're inexperienced, but the only way to get experience is to start up.
You have to keep in mind the audience Techcrunch is appealing to: a lot of these rockstars probably really think wisdom comes with intelligence instead of the years. What I'm wondering about, though, is the rest of these younger entrepreneurs: I understand that the older entrepreneurs of course make better decisions, but I wonder how much of these younger entrepreneurs (wrongfully) think they are just as capable, and…
I'm 21 and CEO of a startup and I don't know shit - I'm not even that smart - hence why I talk and listen to as many smart people as I can. I like to think I'm pretty good at working out what advice is good advice...
I also feel the only way to learn properly is to do it. You'll only follow someone's advice so far till your gut sets in and you need to make your own path - even if that requires being proved wrong.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#15I have a theory why successful 'old' guys come as such a surprise. It is because a 'young founder' is largely a product of propaganda. Young guys are mercilessly exploited by VC crowd. Venture Capitalists and startup-buying companies like Google (should I also add incubators like YC?) need to maintain 'young is good' thesis to attract the supply of fresh cannon fodder. The truth is that a VC sits on a portfolio of un…
Your theory is about a third right. Young founders do get more attention from the press. But not because of propaganda campaigns by their investors. The press doesn't have to be talked into it: they already have a bias toward writing about young founders.
And it's definitely false that VCs prefer founders who are young because they can be pushed around. VCs are very unlikely to invest in someone they can push around. Nothing turns them off like weakness.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#16Wasn't there a big to-do at Revenue Bootcamp with PG and Mike Moritz? Didn't Moritz dismiss/dodge questions about "older" (> 30) founders? (see: http://www.thefunded.com/funds/item/5749)
Aren't most YC founders It's curious.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#17They're also all male, in addition to being old, married, and having two kids. Therefore, women won't be successful start-up founders.
Interesting, but I don't think it's productive for people to focus on how they are demographically different from your typical "success" story in any field or endeavor.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#18Silicon Valley has probably funded a huge number of companies that are really features and not companies. It’s very easy to build a feature and call yourself a CEO. It’s much harder to actually grow a company...
This irked me a bit. I wonder how the author would define "feature" and why he believes that real companies don't simply make features.
As far as I can tell, there are companies out there with small feature-like products that are making consistent profits... and there are plenty of companies with massive complex products that haven't got a clue how to make money. I don't think you can choose to call something a company or not based solely on the complexity of what its main product/service.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#19The more interesting question to me is which age demographic does better with less funding. Web 2.0 companies may be just "features" but the great thing about them is that they require barely any investment. In fact, a young person without any commitments (family, mortgage, etc.) and enough determination could figure out a way to do a startup with no VC investment at all. Could an older entrepreneur with a lot of commitments do a startup with such little investment? Probably not.
Re: When It Comes To Founding Successful Startups, Old Guys Rule
#20This is simply survivorship bias.