For what it's worth, I feel more ready and able to do a startup now than I would have been when I was younger. Just for starters I was already in my mid-20s when I got my PhD.
A good friend of mine sold his startup last year to AOL for enough money that he'll never have to work again. He was 41 at the time and I believe his co-founder was around the same age. This gives me hope that I'm not quite over the hill yet ;-)
I just turned 22 today :)
I'd agree with that. I'm 25 and sometimes wonder if I'm over the hill.
Then again, my boss in my day job (sole founder and CEO) is almost 50. So it's not *impossible* to start late. I have noticed that it makes things difficult, culture-wise. The startup I'm at has a very 9-5 culture and tends to move fairly slowly, which is frustrating for young, ambitious hires like myself. It does have customers and manages to turn a profit, but I worry that we're falling behind the technology curve and may find ourselves without customers if a major market shake-out occurs or a competitor invades.
Every time I hear someone older say they are getting forgetful because of their age (unless they really have dementia) I laugh inside, because everyone forgets stuff all the time- it's just that when you're older you have an excuse to pin it on. If your boss is 50 and the company is sluggish and behind the culture and curve, then it's your boss's disposition that made it so, not his age. It's a kind of slow culture that anyone turning a profit can get stuck in.
Hopefully by your 23rd you'll be getting ready to retire :-)
I'm a 22 year-old learning animal. I expect to get my ass handed to me every time I deal with someone my senior; given the experience I've had with my first start-up, I've found this to be par for the course.
While I believe that I have it in myself to build the foundation for a highly profitable company, I also expect that my ability to build great companies will only improve with age.
I just turned 0o25 myself. Or just 0x15.
Mid life crisis in early 20s = Quarter life crisis? A lot of people have it in the years after they graduate when they realise they're just trapped in an office. A startup might just be our equivalant of buying a sports car.
I'm career changing and going back to school. I should be done with my CS degree in two years. While I'm finishing school, though, I'm setting up my life to be a serial founder. I'll be 35 at that time.
I know that's breaking the mold, but I've had some time to set things up:
When I'm done with school, I will make a decent living working part time. I have moved to Silicon Valley. I will have my team together. We won't be betting the farm while iterating through startup ideas.
I'm sure it won't all be a bed of roses, but I think there's something to be said for taking time to prepare for a life of uncertainty.
That being said, I'm taking the summer off school to work on a project.
--
require 'hpricot'
sum = 0 count = 0.0
file = Hpricot(File.open("comments.htm","r"))
file.search("span.comment/font") do |line| if line.inner_html =~ /([^\s][0-9]+[.,\s])/ number = $1.strip.to_i if number gt 10 && number lt 70 sum += number count += 1 end end end
puts "average age of founder is: " + sprintf("%.1f",sum/count)
The founders of the company I work for during the day are late 30s and one of them about 50.
"The other reason it's hard to start a company before 23 is that people won't take you seriously. VCs won't trust you, and will try to reduce you to a mascot as a condition of funding. Customers will worry you're going to flake out and leave them stranded. Even you yourself, unless you're very unusual, will feel your age to some degree; you'll find it awkward to be the boss of someone much older than you, and if you're 21, hiring only people younger rather limits your options." - How to start a Startup
To make that situation work I think you need to believe strongly in two things:
1) Being a good leader does not mean being the smartest/most knowledgeable person in your company. It means being able to spot the smartest people and make them work together and learn from each other. That's not as simple as it sounds
2) You MUST believe 110% that age is a completely irrelevant metric when determining the "smartness" of a person. I don't care if someone is 20 years older than I am - if they haven't done a start-up then that puts me ahead of them in respect to running a start up. They may be an infinitely better coder/designer/whatever than I am but not a better startup founder.
The second reason is why I ditched my career as an attorney to be a start up founder. I don't intend on letting my income be determined by the number of years I've been sitting behind a desk.
"We care more about how smart you are than how old you are, and more about the quality of your ideas than whether you have a formal business plan."
Perhaps the question should be: How many startups have you been a part of?
YC founders probably differ from the average founder more in how hackerly they are than their age. We have a strong bias toward companies run by the people actually writing the software.
Experience is important, passion is more important.
Experience without passion is a dead startup.
BTW the "real job" means the 4th person in at a digital media startup. Older and Wiser.
I couldn't have done it any early. My collective experience over the last 10 years has really helped me focus on my startup Tinbag.com. As said above, having a supporting wife is a must. The new country part, I left England because it was just too cost probative to do a startup there.
I will be 26 next month, and I've never felt more prepared.
Relatedly: two of us have wives and families, which does make things more difficult financially and time-wise. Do any other founders have families? Do you work on the startup full-time? How do you fund yourselves?
In some ways, I think it's nice to be married as it gives me a certain stability that I didn't have before.
Edit: BTW, I'm 31. I actually feel like it's the right time for me to try something of my own. I feel like I have a better vision of more things than I did when I was younger. I don't feel 'old' though, and we don't have kids (yet).
In some ways I miss the freedom of being a little younger and single- being able to drop absolutely everything and move somewhere, knowing you'll be able to take care of yourself at the very least no matter what. On the other hand, there's a certain stability in your life that comes from being married and from having children. It can really be an anchor when times are difficult. It also usually forces you to take a lot more realistic view of your potential startup. Will this really produce revenue? Am I really covering my bases? etc.
It's a strain on personal/family life, but I firmly believe that starting a startup now is the best time for me to do so. I've been in the work world long enough to realize what I don't like, what I'm sick of, and what kinds of things people in my position are looking for.
There's also something to be said for the support that a spouse can give you, and for the energy that children impart just by being around you. Yeah, I have my bad days, but all in all, I think that this is the time.
Focus is the main thing that limited resources will impart to you. My two most limited resources at the moment are time and money. Since I don't have much of each, and can't afford to fail, I am that much more focused on what I need to be doing.
I believe that competence, experience, and drive are not determined by age. I consider all aspiring entrepreneurs to be my peers and all successful entrepreneurs to be my role models.
Anyway, I didn't notice any particular agenda for picking younger founders...younger folks are the ones that showed up (I met all, or nearly all, of the folks who got to the demo stage in Boston..including the majority that didn't get picked).
it's great to be among this virtual tech startup community sharing the same stress and anxieties...maybe we should make some skype conference, public chat, skypecast whatever is called...
as a matter of fact i am opening a new thread here in news.YC right after this comment to suggest this.
*update: my suggestion is in this thread:
http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=2336