Comment by trcollinson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trcollinson | Hacker News Reader

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I would say the simple answer is yes, of course I would risk my day job to start a company after 35 if I had a brilliant idea and capability to execute. I did in fact.

The follow up questions are, what are the real risks?

Some people seem to be making an assumption that there is more risk as you get older. Risk isn't so cut and dry. Certainly you may have more risk as it pertains to your family. By the time I was 35 I was married with kids and a mortgage. Certainly there is more risk of changing your retirement. By the time I was 35 I had more money going towards retirement as well as retirement funds collected. By starting a business I was significantly risking those things.

Some people also make the assumption that young founders make better founders. By the time I was 35 I had worked for many companies and corporations, large and small. I had learned quite a number of business rules for myself and I had come up with a set of rules and patterns that worked in business. At 25 I did not have those experiences or that knowledge at all. I thought I did, of course, but I did not.

Over all I felt it was much less risky at 35+ to start a business and leave the day to day. But that was for me. I also found no problem at all jumping back into a day job if a business didn't work out. So it hardly seems like a risk at all.

This. I started my company post 35. It was much easier with less business risk because of all the experience I had accumulated by that point. But there was more personal risk because my kids and spouse were all dependent on my income.

Actually I remember Sam talking in an interview about this.. older people have much better success rates, but they are also much less known, as they don't try to build billion dollar companies.

For the child comment to yours, Sam here is referring to Sam Altman.

I actually can't seem to remember this interview but it certainly rings true for me! Again, this might be an age based difference. When I was younger I was going to be "the next Bill Gates, but so much better, and so much more ethical, and cooler!" I actually said pretty much exactly that. I wrote up a plan in my very early 20's on how to become a billionaire by 30.

Post 35 years old, I wanted to start a business for entirely different reasons. I didn't care if I was a billionaire. I didn't worry about whether my company was in a good position to accept seed funding or venture capital. I wasn't worried about whether it would grow to the point of being sold or go public. I worried about profitability, sales, making the best products for my customers, and whether my target customers were happy and my market segment was growing.

Now, I don't want to make it sound like those other things (being in a position to take seed funding or venture capital, going public, becoming a billion dollar company, etc) are bad things. They aren't! My personal focus had changed by then. That is all. Did it make me more successful? I have no idea at all!

Who is sam?

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