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Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

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Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#11

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Russell91 wrote: post #6

4 of 5 of the biggest tech company founders were in their early 20s. So the biggest ideas clearly slanted towards young visionary founders, but the statistics do skew back towards older founders for all but the largest companies.

I think this is very important, basically that if you look at the data by something like market cap it would probably skew very young. E.g. AirBnB and Dropbox are (IIRC, may have changed by now) the majority of total valuation for ycom, and those companies were both started by early 20-somethings.

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#12

Post by Bucephalus355 »

In art the term for this is “young geniuses and old masters”. We are all familiar with the trope of a ‘young genius’ but I think it says something that art, a field older than any language or building, has a specific category carved out for those who reach distinguished success in old age...

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#13

Post by johnny313 »

Russell91 wrote: post #6

4 of 5 of the biggest tech company founders were in their early 20s. So the biggest ideas clearly slanted towards young visionary founders, but the statistics do skew back towards older founders for all but the largest companies.

This seems to redefine the question away from "what does a successful entrepreneur look like" in an attempt to maintain the narrative that "young visionaries" are the most successful.

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#15

Post by blawson »

The paper doesn’t appear to be able identify more than the age distribution of the founders from the dataset, unfortunately.

Would be interesting to know how many of the successful older founders were unsuccessful younger founders previously.

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#16

Post by thisrod »

redm wrote: post #3

As I've gotten older (ironically) I've felt this should be the case; key decisions have such an impact on the success or failure of a startup, it's much more likely you make the right key decisions the more experience and wisdom you have.

PG has written about that. He made the point that, in 1998, the people with experience and wisdom all agreed that the world had enough search engines already.

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#17

Post by mcbreezy »

I'm 37. I constantly remind myself that Craigslist, Wikipedia, Salesforces, Intel, etc. were founded by someone >=35 years of age[0], and that, since I live a healthy lifestyle have at least 30 great years ahead of me (on average).

https://readwrite.com/2013/09/27/jimmy-wales-to-silicon-vall...

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#18

Post by mcbreezy »

blawson wrote: post #15

The paper doesn’t appear to be able identify more than the age distribution of the founders from the dataset, unfortunately. Would be interesting to know how many of the successful older founders were unsuccessful younger founders previously.

There would be another important lesson: don't give up! (it's a true cliché, yes)

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#19

Post by mcbreezy »

Russell91 wrote: post #6

4 of 5 of the biggest tech company founders were in their early 20s. So the biggest ideas clearly slanted towards young visionary founders, but the statistics do skew back towards older founders for all but the largest companies.

Which 4/5? Zuck yes, Bezos no, Page/Brin: doubtful they were early 20s. Maybe 20s, but not early 20s.

EDIT: Page was 25 and Brin was 24: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page

Re: Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship

#20

Post by jjallen »

thisrod wrote: post #16
redm wrote: post #3

As I've gotten older (ironically) I've felt this should be the case; key decisions have such an impact on the success or failure of a startup, it's much more likely you make the right key decisions the more experience and wisdom you have.

PG has written about that. He made the point that, in 1998, the people with experience and wisdom all agreed that the world had enough search engines already.

This one reminds me of when years ago I wrote about the "already-exists" startup fallacy/bias: https://medium.com/@halfhenry/how-to-tell-when-you-should-an...
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