Paul Graham on why he doesn’t like seeing college-age and younger founders
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Most on HN weren't even born yet when his worm took down a large part of the net but I well remember it;<). I hadn't heard the story on how he took an entire term off to relaunch Harvard on the Internet.
As a famous young person once said "Young people are just smarter.".
It appears the message here from PG is that "Younger people have intellect but perhaps not the demonstrated tenacity and drive needed to succeed, and tenacity and drive trump intellect when it comes to entrepreneurialism.
Actually now that I think about it this is wrong. Everyone tends to value young people more highly than older people - that's the way our society works. What can be said is that "older people tend to devalue older people less than younger people devalue older people".
Knowing there is stuff to learn is important for those who are beginners.
It's important to see this through a lens of having an appropriate amount of potential and experience/maturity/discipline rather than a function of age. Folks who spend more time behind keyboards than learning about the experiences of others leaves them at a disadvantage of finding problems to solve that matter to others.
Being young is an advantage in some ways, and not being young is an advantage in some ways.
The more well rounded you are, while you're younger, and are able to learn from others, the greater your chances to are succeed, earlier.
There is often (but not always) a need for young people to gather experience in problem-solving as experienced by others and discovering value.
You gotta remember, the folks in their 30+'s were 20 once too, just like anyone, living in the same world of the internet absolutely being gobsmacking in possibilities. That hasn't gone away or changed, we're on the same playing field.
The second study mentioned in the article, which is longitudinal rather than cross sectional, has more optimistic results for older ages, but as it says, there are problems with tracking the same people over time, such as them just getting better at IQ tests.
Regardless, the first, cross-sectional study gives clear answers to the current relation of age to intellectual ability.
Age shouldn't be a factor in hiring, only ability, but it's not unreasonable to say that, at least right now, you can expect people in their 20s to perform better at many tasks.
It's also hard not to just agree with the "young people are just smarter" statement based on intuition. When have you ever heard of a 20 year old needing help figuring out a television remote? Something clearly changed between the time that someone learned to drive a car and when they had to be shown for the 50th time how to upload a video from their camera to facebook.
Ageism? meh - that was a snag from before you kids were born.
Okay, there are no doubt examples that support that.
But PG's focus is a bit narrow, something like YC graduate and VC funded $100 billion in 10 years or bust.
Here is a bigger picture that is really more accurate and optimistic:
First, we should consider a wider range of startups than "... $100 billion ...." We should note that the US is just awash in startups, from Aunt Martha's custom made wedding dresses and Joe's landscaping service to the full range of Main Street businesses in villages, towns, ..., the largest cities, border to border in the US, to much more. Some of these startups include Tom's ambitious Web site. Tom's older brother is half way through his ugrad electronics engineering degree and has taken a trip to China and lined up some manufacturing for a new pocket, wireless electronics item for some special purpose or other, uh, maybe letting Aunt Martha's customers send in good 3D specifications of their body shapes from some ultrasonic signals.
Lesson: There's a LOT of startup activity for all ages, both genders, all education levels, etc. in the US. Some of these, maybe not Aunt Martha's custom wedding dresses, maybe a young person's second startup if not their first, might be big surprises and become the $100 billion.
Second, PG is too narrow on the influences, inputs, information, inspiration, guidance, leadership, knowledge, experience, examples, etc. in practice available, and often important, for young people in business. As for dolphins, orcas, whales, wolves, big cats of Africa, ..., human children learn from their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, family members, friends, neighbors, etc. They might get to work in Uncle Harry's custom Web site development service or some of their father's 7 fast food restaurants, get started in wireless electronics from their grandfather, a senior engineer at Qualcomm, etc. -- maybe learn high school math by age 10, calculus at 11, vector analysis at 12, Maxwell's equations at 13 or some such and, then, do a wireless startup, with some help from Uncle Harry!
Lesson: For a lot of young people who want to start businesses, there are a LOT of information sources other than paying "full tuition" at the scary, solo school of hard knocks and high probability of failure in any of several respects that PG seems to paint.
Disclosure: convicted felon here
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
This would make successful founders tend to be older than unsuccessful founders, but it's like always finding something in the last place that you look, or (happened to me) you're most likely to get injured on the last ski run of the day.
Let me FTFY: once you start a successful business, it's unlikely that another you start will be nearly equally successful.
Most entrepreneurs are serial ones, and successful ones -- particularly those who leave their business behind (e.g. by acquisition) tend to try again. But contrary to popular belief, having a successful business in your past doesn't make it easier to make your new ventures successful -- it just makes it easier to start one.
EDIT: this was a \s piece but obviously it went over some peoples heads lol
By which time the web crowd will have moved on to something else.
Propagating nonsense about needing to have deep understanding in widely different fields (ML! DevOps! Frontend!) is not only patently wrong, it is needlessly discouraging.
Also, there is a bit of a difference between a high school student, a college freshman or sophomore (<21) and someone graduating college (22,23). Small numbers, but there are different degrees of experience, maturity, and being just a little more past the "exploratory" phase.