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Comment by personjerry | Hacker News Reader

I should've been more clear, I feel like at 51 a better leverage of impact is no longer the startup but writing (essays, blogs, books) or other forms of influence (e.g. teaching)

I appreciate the feedback on the writing!

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But why? What about being 51 vs younger means writing is “better leverage”.

At 51 you don't have the energy and time to compete on "grinding" which is often the "advantage" in the early days of a startup before a moat has solidified

Presumably at 60 the right move is to surrender one’s body for science, as you’ve passed all the milestones of usefulness.

You appear from your published CV to be much, much younger than 51. I'm not 51, but I'm much closer to it than you are, and at an age where many people in my social circle at past that. What on earth gives you the confidence to say something like "at 51 you don't have the energy to compete"?

Also, at 51, you probably have more time to compete than a 36 year old.

I think you're way off on this.

I certainly had much more time & energy for startup shenanigans in my mid 40s than I did in my mid 30s. But even with that experience I’d be very hesitant to extrapolate about any age because of how different everyone’s lives are.

I don't want to speculate too wildly, but I think it may be possible that everybody's life and energy levels and motivation and interests are not tracked on the same fixed linear path.

Though I guess it would be nice as somebody in my 20s to picture that my future is an established track to follow.

Or at the very least, to be able to say to yourself, “You’re doing fine. You’re beating yourself up because you haven’t started a company in your 20s, but that’s ok. Because you haven’t aged out of being a founder, and you can still do what drives you.”

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