31–40 of 93 posts
I don't think this is surprising, but I'm also not surprised that VCs and accelerators still trend toward younger founders. It makes sense to me that older (successful) founders likely leverage their own experience and network to a greater extent, but this isn't necessarily what seed stage investors are looking for. I think investors are more in the game of betting on people/teams, injecting their own experience and…
What were these people doing at 25/30/35/40?
Trying to start a successful business is much easier when you know how to get stuff done, have access to people who can get stuff done in areas you can't, and have enough money to buy time, help and resources to get stuff done.
Young people typically are lacking in one or more of those areas but sometimes it works out.
I honestly can't understand why this would shock anyone with experience in engineering. As a senior developer, I'm vastly more able to realize ideas than I was even three years ago. I also know vastly more. I'm able to understand cutting-edge systems and language research that I couldn't before. I'm able to design systems quickly and more reliably. I'm able to separate good ideas from bad ideas more reliably. I'm bet…
I agree but there's probably a limit on that sentiment. If you start a family you are likely to become more risk adverse, this would increase again as you approach retirement.
What were these people doing at 25/30/35/40?
Short answer: becoming experts at their craft, building business relationships and filling their coffers. Trying to start a successful business is much easier when you know how to get stuff done, have access to people who can get stuff done in areas you can't, and have enough money to buy time, help and resources to get stuff done. Young people typically are lacking in one or more of those areas but sometimes it work…
I think there's a little bit of confirmation bias mixed with a bit of jealousy toward younger developers. The fact is, technology doesn't really matter that much to the success of a business. Business sense, ability to spot what's next, and a fair bit of risk taking attitude are what matters. Older engineers don't fare better than younger engineers in starting a business not because they're worse at engineering, but…
Advanced AI usually depends on finding a business model, which requires experience. And places like Deep Mind were started by researchers who had been at it a few decades.
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.
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.
I don't think this is surprising, but I'm also not surprised that VCs and accelerators still trend toward younger founders. It makes sense to me that older (successful) founders likely leverage their own experience and network to a greater extent, but this isn't necessarily what seed stage investors are looking for. I think investors are more in the game of betting on people/teams, injecting their own experience and…
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.
Microsoft, Google, and Facebook indeed were started by young founders. Twenty years later Google might be the only meaningful one standing. Time will tell.
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...