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Google likes to hire young so they can brainwash you into being "googly." Same with other companies. Once your brain thinks you need six TPS reports every day, it's not worth fixing you when we can hire younger, unbroken people. VCs love 'em young. Sequoia bluntly states they prefer to fund two guys working from a dorm room.

The flip side of this analysis would be: YC and Sequoia prefer to fund kids because kids are easier to manipulate. Kids don't know how to read a contract or a term sheet. Kids don't know how to protect their own interests in their business when accepting funding. Kids don't know how to play hardball in negotiations.

Kids, in other words, are very easy to use as disposable resources.

(Indeed, with appropriate conditioning you can even convince them to believe that becoming a disposable resource is a sign of their Epic Founderhood.)

Someone who's seen peers get screwed over in previous gigs, or who's been screwed over themselves, is going to have learned a few things about how not to get screwed over the next time. So it's more profitable to deal with people who haven't learned those lessons yet. And once they have learned those lessons, you throw them overboard and replace them with the next batch of dewey-eyed innocents.

While that might be true (that young people are more easily manipulated) it doesn't make much sense as a primary reason for why VC's like young people.

Ultimately, making a big successful company is really hard and VC's would want to bet on people who have the best chance of doing that - not the ones they can easily screw with.

Note: I don't buy the idea that only young people make good entrepreneurs. There's tons of evidence that older entrepreneurs can be very successful. It's probably true though that young people in general are more likely to massively revolutionize something entrenched, even if their overall success rate is the same or lower than older people.

Einstein, for example, was 26 when he published 4 papers that would change the field of physics forever: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annus_Mirabilis_papers

I was shocked that none of the top-voted comments mention this aspect of the matter. The attitude of founders is one thing, and possibly worrisome, but the attitude of funders is predictable: they'd like to maximize some index that combines "likely to start a company that goes huge" and "likely to be much better at starting that company than at negotiating how much of a stake we'll get in it." There is an obvious economic incentive to be balancing those, not just looking at the first. With respect to pg, VCs clearly vary in how they construct that index - but a cold look at the matter through the lens of economics should tell anyone that it certainly is an index, not just Most Likely To Succeed.

> Once you reach a certain age, if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable people.

This is premised on the assumption that everyone was trying to "make it" at 22. Outside the little SV social network bubble, founders are generally older with a deep well of experience in a problem domain. I worked at two companies run by their original founders. The founders at both companies were in their late 30's or 40's when they started the companies. They had PhD's, years of experience in the field, numerous papers to their name, and extensive professional networks. They weren't trying to "make it" at 22--they were working in the industry building up a solid foundation for starting a business.

Thank you for stating this more eloquently than I could. I don't think it can be emphasized enough that not everyone is obsessed with playing "the game".

So I'm not a fan of ageism and I wouldn't ascribe it to pg without evidence...

But given the "startup = growth" essay, where he says that only 1 company per cycle makes any difference to YC's returns, I can see the logic behind ageism.

Young people (I'm not one of them anymore) just have more unpredictable outcomes. They are the Black Swans.

The Black Swan theory is that the outliers shape our world. And that has been true in tech for sure -- Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. are all anomalies. These companies grew enormously quickly and were all started by very young and inexperienced men. The two YC success stories that get pointed to -- AirBNB and DropBox -- were also started by the very young and inexperienced.

Older people are perhaps more likely to be successful. But there is less variance in their outcomes. There's the logic in investing -- once you're making money, you're less valuable. Because people know what you're worth. Before you make any money, people can ascribe crazy valuations to you. It will be wrong a lot of the time, but it doesn't matter because the one Black Swan event is what you're looking for. You only have to be right once.

You nailed it with Older people are perhaps more likely to be successful. But there is less variance in their outcomes.

No evidence? He is overt in bragging about his age discrimination. He is likely the "thought leader" who made this practice acceptable in Silicon Valley.

* citation needed

"The other cutoff, 38, has a lot more play in it. One reason I put it there is that I don't think many people have the physical stamina much past that age. I used to work till 2:00 or 3:00 AM every night, seven days a week. I don't know if I could do that now.

Also, startups are a big risk financially. If you try something that blows up and leaves you broke at 26, big deal; a lot of 26 year olds are broke. By 38 you can't take so many risks-- especially if you have kids."

http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html

I don't see any bragging there. Those seem like reasonable and non-discriminatory observations.

I'm pretty happy that at 33 my life isn't really any different than it was at 17, except that I know more, have more stuff, have more money, and know more people. I guess I have slightly less physical endurance (although, not really), but rarely is that the primary factor for success.

Older people are perhaps more likely to be successful. But there is less variance in their outcomes.

We learn how to control our variance as we get older. (I'm 29, so I have no idea if I'm "young" or "old" by SV standards.) High-variance life isn't fun unless you hit an early home run. Otherwise, it's stressful and shitty. Experiences like getting fired because you were better than your CTO's-friend manager and made him insecure are pretty damaging, and they lead to self-filtering and variance-reduction as a survival strategy.

Give us an R&D environment that doesn't beat the shit out of high-variance people for 20 years, and you'll see a world where experience doesn't reduce variance so sharply, but delivers increases on the whole distribution.

Can we anchor this comment to the top of the discussion? You've eloquently characterized the entire problem and a potential solution.

So many current work environments have self defeating dynamics. You're not allowed to be better than your boss. When that gets thrown away (e.g. startups -- you have no boss) everybody can thrive. Well, they can thrive if they haven't been trained over a lifetime to be risk averse due to shitty management.

>> High-variance life isn't fun unless you hit an early home run. Otherwise, it's stressful and shitty.

Story of my life! +1 to that!

"Once you reach a certain age, if you haven't "made it," you aren't one of the smarter and much more capable people."

Do try not to believe in myths. Especially in 2012: people are young way longer than before and 'smarter and more capable' is quite relative.