What was the age of the oldest person admitted to Y Combinator? | Hacker News Reader

What was the age of the oldest person admitted to Y Combinator?

39 pointsTimzzz28 comments

It's one of those awkward late stage career things but I have a friend and colleague who is applying to Y-Combinator and wants me as a co-founder. We are both 53. Yeah I know it's illegal to discriminate on age but we all know it happens or it's enforced and they bring on someone mediocre to fulfill requirements. (I am an older person of color who has been through this kind of reception before. I wish people would look at my ability to do not my colour when hiring me.You are hiring me to do things not fill a colour quota.)

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I've just turned 50, though I've applied to YC many times before, even in my 30s.

It would be nice to know the answer to who was the oldest person, but at the same time, why does it matter?

We can't deny that ageism exists in the industry, you're not going to let that stop you from building your business, right?

Is there a benefit you get from age that younger people don't have? How are you going to leverage that to your advantage?

I wanted to leverage my age and experience by not applying and just getting on a building it. But I have a founder who is convinced that you need money first then prototypes.I assured her that there is nothing in her proposition needs any tech that you cannot buy off the self or use bubble.io or something.

It really bemuses me as she has bootstrapped a confectionary business to over $100m. Sadly got trashed by the sociopath late stage growth investors who gave her back nearly nothing. Just like Dee Hock.

In filling in the application it became clear that they want young, "moldable" and want to establish a power relationship with the reader. I became clearly nauseas.

Your co-founder is wrong, or going about it the wrong way. I don't know what your business is, but if she's already successfully bootstrapped a $100m business, why would she think she needs money to start this venture?

If that money is the $500k from YC, how much difference is $500k going to make for your business?

If it's the valuation post-YC, what makes her think you can get there without the money?

BTW, my co-founder has the same attitude towards YC, and he's only in his 30s, but I'm the one pushing for us to apply. It can't hurt the business, but keep progressing as if you're not going to get in, because that is the most likely outcome anyway.

Maybe I'm sadistic, but I like doing the application, and have been doing them for over a decade now without an invite.

“But I have a founder who is convinced that you need money first then prototypes and that nothing in her proposition needs any tech that you cannot buy off the self.”

FWIW, when people get into YCombinator, the first lesson they drive home is to talk to users and ship product.

Build tech isn’t on that list.

People young and old, mess this part up.

I agree wholly. But fear is real and understandable.

My playbook used to be:

1) Have an idea 2) Identify any customers, Ideally one who is in a terrible emotional distress that they do not have that solution you have come up with. If you cant find one move on to another idea quickly. 3) Ask them if they want your solution - show storyboards. 4) Ask them to pay costs to build it and feed you ramen. 5) Ensure that the software, since they paid next to nothing for it, is yours. 6) Go sell it like Larry to a few more. 7) Show invetsor types once you start growing and getting longer contracts.

> the first lesson they drive home is to talk to users and ship product. Build tech isn’t on that list.

That's the perennial mystery of Y :) - how is it even possible to ship product before building the tech?

I am confused. Then how do you ship a product?

MVP i get. Tech free product I don’t.

Unless we are talking selling something that doesn’t exist.

>>Build tech isn’t on that list.

ACTUALLY HUGE KUDOS THANK YOU FOR THAT!!! Yes, exactly what I thought. She would do so well with another person who cares about the retail experience as much as she does. THANK YOU AGAIN!!! :-)

how can you bootstrap a confectionary business to 100m? curious how that was possible at all to pay for marketing/sales in a cutthroat industry like the food business

She raised expansion capital from traditional loans. It was a not for profit and she has a badass MBA. Yeah the margins were rough, distribution deals even rougher.

borrowed money with personal guarantee to pay for marketing and to hire people?

The truth is there's massive ageism throughout this industry. It's everywhere --not just SV/SF/west coast, but it's much worse in that region relative to others.

I feel it would be best to give you the truth directly.

I know :-) What I wanted was to be wrong. Really wrong.

The answer is on the homepage of ycombinator.com.

> We help founders at their earliest stages regardless of their age.

> 52% of YC's billion dollar company founders were under 28 years old and the oldest founder was in their 50s

It’s not that yc cares about the age. It’s that the whole ecosystem that funds startups prefer younger and (till recently) single male founders.

One side of this is that startups are hard and demanding a lot of time and energy. Startups with other people’s money who are on a tight time frame to get a return on investment makes startups even more harder and even more demanding. Just by simple physics younger founders are better positioned to win on the demand vector. It’s about probabilities. Now an experienced founder who may have more obligations on their time and energy may still “win” on the demand vector but they have to skin the cat with some other ace up their sleeve that allows them to meet the time compressed demand needs of a startup.

So yea. It’s not about yc it’s about the whole system that thinks a certain way. Human psychology plays a big factor in this as these people in the funding side are no more “smarter” than the the average person and are hence susceptible to the same biases.

I say build something that people are willing to pay for and then bootstrap your way. If it’s a good product or service these same people will line up to you and you have the upper hand when taking their money which allows you to dictate your terms.

Thank you for that.

I think I have solved for n.

n=1

You should do it anyway. Not because it's easy -- it won't be -- but because it will inspire other people after you to try. People who are facing their own barriers -- sometimes the same barrier you're facing, but sometimes ones that you never even imagined.

HN loves to crap on DEI efforts, but, point-in-fact, not going with the flow (when the flow washes you away from capital, away from opportunity) is almost always an act of defiance and resistance. The endlessly-circulating idea that HR departments are handing things to you because you're 'diverse' is simply one more raindrop on your umbrella. Shake it off.

Thank you for being human. You are the best. :-)

YC appears to be interested in 1) new technology that 2) is valuable (something people want), with 3) unicorn potential (value in billions) and 4) founders that can devote >80 hrs a week getting it there before someone else does.

If you fit this model, I don't see why age would matter.

FTR, 4) tends to eliminate people over ~30. Also, my observation is that 1) favors the young who seem to have time to identify and play around with new tech in a way that older people typically do not, which would explain the median age of YC applicants, but not necessarily exclude applicants by age.

I seriously doubt that YC discriminates on age deliberately.

My understanding is that you're expected to do 3 months in San Francisco and that would stop most people with a family. Which is like most people over 30.

1. You and your co-founder might have a lot of relevant industry expertise or a productive Rolodex to accelerate sales.

2. Have you built anything or validated the idea in any way?

wrt #2: She believes you need money first.

If you can't work through disagreements now, starting a business together won't help.

What exactly does the business need to spend money on? You can get a free/starter/subsidized version of just about every component of a tech stack.

This itself opens up a new opportunity. What if there is a website with listings ONLY for 45+ (a parallel universe of sorts for skilled seniors) ?

If you are serious about this so am I. I want to go to the Kauffman Foundation to do this. Also a gentleman named Bob Cringely wants to do something like this and started... then stopped. He will hate me for saying this but gentle persuasion might help as of anyone I have ever met he really wants to really democratize the startup process across America. Kauffman foundation has great stats to show that the returns on investing on older people are higher aggregate.

This is a simple, great question and our of curiosity I'd love to know the answer.

Im 56 and I've applied to YC 2 times with projects that after turned susseful companies , and Yes im sure they will no invest on older people.

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