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Comment by formalsystem | Hacker News Reader

I always find it interesting when these sorts of threads are posted. I for one look at them as am I too old to be starting my own company or should I chill out because I still have time.

Fundamentally I think there's limited value in drawing lessons from these stories because you're probably your own best judge of whether you should quit your job or not. Your risk tolerance lowers as you get older but your skills will improve so it's up to you to decide what's the sweet spot. That said there is an age threshold where you'll be treated like an old man at a big company so may as well demonstrate your expertise on your own company before that happens.

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Speaking as someone who is 50, I would say you have 2 choices: take your risks early so you have time to recover from them before you retire, or take a very low risk approach to your early career and save a lot of money so that you can afford to take risks later in your career.

3) work for big corp, have idea that can't be done small, and successfully pitch internally. Move vertically internally. Not as sexy, but much more likely to succeed if your goal is the idea.

Interesting idea. Having worked in a big company before, though, I definitely could not do this! The politics would kill me before I even got close. I wonder if that means that I couldn't do a startup either...

Only works if your company sees you as a potential partner.

Which is why one of the strongest criteria I have now with a company, is whether or not they would consider doing a joint deal.

You are far more likely to be treated as a peon, or someone to rob, (or beat down with lawsuits) in todays corporate climate. Most of the executive staff, is straight up sociopathic bootlickers.

I cannot tell you how many times I correctly called, major market shifts (what would now be called "disruptive") only to have it fall on deaf ears and watch some competitor rise to new heights months to a year later (and eat their lunch).

Nah, someone will steal your work and get credit. Big companies are full of passive aggressive co-workers who won't think twice to screw you over.

> am I too old to be starting my own company or should I chill out because I still have time.

Seems to me youth or age are probably less relevant questions than whether you see an opportunity (and to what degree it's proven), what domain expertise is necessary to address it (and whether you have or can get access to that), and what resources you have available.

And as you noted, there are risks to simply settling into corporate comfort.

I learnt to code and started my online business in my 30s because it's fun. Age shouldn't stop anyone from fun.

30s is young. 20s is still a child.

Just out of curiosity, how did you learn to code on your own and what did you build?

I built CanadaPups.com.

At first I started to learn by reading Computer Science 101 textbooks. The intro MIT textbook is in python and has more depth than other CS101 books. (Guttag, John. Introduction to Computation and Programming Using Python.)

I then went practical, I learnt Ruby on Rails via https://www.railstutorial.org/. It was good to provide me with mental framework of how websites are built... html, coding and database.

For the actual CanadaPups project, I switched from Rails to Django because I found Rails to be too confusing (maybe due to my inexperience at the time).

That's awesome!! How long did it take you to go from zero to launching your website? Did you do this on your free time (were your working full time)?

I worked on it in my free time. I have an non-tech day job. From zero (start reading CS101 book) to launch was 1 year. Could have been less if I didn't abandon my Rails version and re-do in Django.

Nice! Are you still working in your non-tech day job, or have you switched careers? I’m thinking of learning Rails as my first foray into programming.

I'm still in my non-tech day job. Not planning on switching. Just a side project for fun (and profit). I think the Rails Tutorial is a good way to learn basics even if you end up using javascript (react or whatever later on). Ruby is my favorite language, but Django (in Python) suits me well.

I don‘t think people will use this research to „optimize“ their time to fund. If you have an idea and things align you will do that regardless of your age.

I think it provides an interesting contrast to the idea of young-genius unicorn-startups in that it underlines that yes, these companies exist and get a lot of coverage but most innovation still comes from people experienced in their field who had time to learn the appropriate skills for leading a company.

Young founder ages are mentioned specifically because they are unusual. Unfortunately, because many people only see ‘newsworthy’ information they get a very distorted view of reality.

> I for one look at them as am I too old to be starting my own company or should I chill out because I still have time.

It's an "average" not a law.

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