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Does life end after 35?

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Re: Does life end after 35?

#141

Post by mixmastamyk »

typicalrunt wrote: post #98
elmuchoprez wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Never trust anyone over 30" is a bit of a rallying cry among musicians. It's often attributed Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Jerry Rubin and a few others during the 1960's, but I'm not sure anyone really knows who said it first. I would guess that people are actually referencing that whole movement when they put it in the Craigslist ads rather than setting a hard and fast restriction. Or maybe it's a bunch of 22-year-olds…

I wonder what kind of rationalization Bob Dylan, The Beatles, et al went through once they reached 30 years of age. Do they move the goal posts to not trusting anyone over 40? Or do they admit that they were youthful and wrong and state that untrustworthy people, at any age, are the only people that shouldn't be trusted.

Probably both.

The concept in the 60's at least was partly due to change in culture between the young "hippies" vs. the older "man". People were realizing in a big way that "the man" was lying to us... Vietnam War, etc.

Things haven't changed much in that regard, but the corporate/govt media "alliance" has become more sophisticated in dispersing/distracting such anger.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#142

Post by [deleted] »

subpixel wrote: post #92
coffeeaddicted wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting 40 made me just feel old. I no longer have as much energy, keeping my weight got harder and let's not forget the annoying loss of hair. Additional experience is somewhat nice, but doesn't make up for it. Then again I spend most of my 30's getting out of debt because of a failed startup. Which might have given me a more negative view on life (last time I could afford traveling around was ~10 years ago).

Nothing saps your energy like mulling over past mistakes/mis-steps/shouldas-couldas. We all have more of these as we get older, but if you do your best to let go of them you'll free yourself up quote a bit. Easier said than done, but I speak from experience.

[deleted]

Re: Does life end after 35?

#143

Post by wahsd »

chasing wrote: post #120
elmuchoprez wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists." This is such a key point. Sometimes it takes years, if not decades, of experience to even know that the problem exists. Put another way, if the problem can be solved by a 22-year-old with no experience in the field, there's a good chance they've misunderstood the problem.

cough(Soylent)cough

Soylent lulz as if that hasn't been done and done again. It's just snake oil under different name.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#144

Post by mkr-hn »

subpixel wrote: post #92
coffeeaddicted wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting 40 made me just feel old. I no longer have as much energy, keeping my weight got harder and let's not forget the annoying loss of hair. Additional experience is somewhat nice, but doesn't make up for it. Then again I spend most of my 30's getting out of debt because of a failed startup. Which might have given me a more negative view on life (last time I could afford traveling around was ~10 years ago).

Nothing saps your energy like mulling over past mistakes/mis-steps/shouldas-couldas. We all have more of these as we get older, but if you do your best to let go of them you'll free yourself up quote a bit. Easier said than done, but I speak from experience.

I learned this one right around when I turned 29. It's easier to look forward when you don't spend much time looking backward.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#145

Post by mixmastamyk »

bippi wrote: post #110
trumbitta2 wrote: post #105

I wish I could take this amazing advice for granted. I'm in my late thirties (36) and still can't afford having a baby. As you may guess, one cannot wait till his sixties for that... So, it really depends on what's the meaning of "successful" to you :)

I know it is trite to say, "No one can afford having a kid." but it's really the truth. For me, sure daycare, toys, and food aren't putting me in the poorhouse, but there is no way I can bankroll everything I think my kids deserve.

Disagree for two reasons. One, kids deserve little but a loving home and a few educational toys. Giving them everything they want is recipe for building a little monster.

Two, for beter or worse, govts subsidize families to the detriment of the single. When the wife and kid arrive, you'll get a ~$500 a month tax break, enough to pay for another bedroom and diapers. The total cost is much less than I'd imagined, especially if you avoid buying all the junk thats expected.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#146

Post by johnjlocke »

jes5199 wrote: post #91
rayiner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> whether people also carry the youthful mindset of always being ready to spot problems, and do something about it. I don't think that's a particularly youthful mindset. Indeed, much of the trend of Silicon Valley right now is the opposite: spot places where you can apply a "social something" even if there's no real underlying problem. As a practical matter, people who are young tend to lack the experience to know wh…

also, 20-somethings won't complain when you work them to death

ding ding ding We have a winner!

Re: Does life end after 35?

#147

Post by pkteison »

beat wrote: post #36
kyro wrote: post #20

I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20, finishing up graduate school, and for the most part feel young. But other than the pediatrics ward, the only other time I start to feel my age is when attending some of these startup events. What I try to keep conscious of is knowing what's reported in the media and what isn't, which are often 2 completely different worlds. On Tech…

I came up with the idea for my startup when I was 47. I don't expect it to be able to make a living at it until I'm 49. Age? Pffth. Then again, I'm not hacking together "Facebook for cats" and hoping for some zeitgeist to make it magically successful while buckets of venture capital rain down on my head, either. A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I…

I think you should pivot, catcanhazitrainbook.com is available, and the growing acceptance of domestic purrtnerships is nothing but pure up and to the right. I agree, college kids don't realize that felines have been marginalized in the new twerking paradigm - and how unfair is it that we send all these tweets around with no cats to chase them? You can get out in front of this and really change the world with your rockstar ninja buckets of vc fueled distributed map reduce haskell most viral housepet centered social network ever.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#148

Post by carbon8 »

wting wrote: post #56

A similar question was asked on Quora recently: https://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-do-people-in-Silic... Some of the companies and founders' ages compiled from the answers: - Zynga: 41 - LinkedIn: 36 - Salesforce: 35 - Intel: 41, 39 - Qualcomm: 52, 50 - Juniper Networks: 42 - Wikipedia: 35 - Pandora: 35 - GigaOm: 39 - Zipcar: 42 - TechCrunch: 35 - Craigslist: 42 - Netflix: 37

Also, from a Kauffman Foundation report:

"The average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders [of companies that have more than $1 million in sales, twenty or more employees, and company branches with fifty or more employees] was thirty-nine when they started their companies. Twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five."

http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2009/04/educatio...

Re: Does life end after 35?

#149

Post by johnjlocke »

api wrote: post #135
eliasmacpherson wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that LinkedIn culturally didn't work crazy hours to get where they were - does anyone know, are any others listed that started out as '9-5' organizations?

I am skeptical of the 60-80 hours thing. It seems like more of a macho thing than a real requirement. The problem is that when you workaholic yourself your productivity per unit time drops, so you're spending more hours but doing as much as you might do in shorter bursts of more focused time. In some cases it's worse... you get total burnout.

The 60-80 hours thing is how computer peeps express their machismo. If we were jocks, we would do like 1000 pushups or something. If you need to spend that much time getting it off the ground, you are doing it wrong.

Re: Does life end after 35?

#150

Post by spinlock »

freyrs3 wrote: post #112
kyro wrote: post #20

I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20, finishing up graduate school, and for the most part feel young. But other than the pediatrics ward, the only other time I start to feel my age is when attending some of these startup events. What I try to keep conscious of is knowing what's reported in the media and what isn't, which are often 2 completely different worlds. On Tech…

> I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20 To be fair the largest demographic of startup founders is in the 30-39 age bracket. While successful twenty-somethings with big exits is something the press likes to cover, they are very much outliers.

I don't know where you're getting your data and I've forgotten where I got mine but I believe most companies are started by founders who are 50+ years old. Maybe my data includes 60 year olds, etc... As well.

But, we both agree it is not the 20 something demographic. 2 unsoirced opinions on the internet - that agree - have to be correct.

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