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Comment by IanDrake | Hacker News Reader

Right after college I started consulting at an eCommerce company that had bought a 17 year old's website for over 1M. Had had built a gaming community site that had become very popular and they wanted the traffic.

I thought the kid was just lucky until I was in a meeting with him. His thought process basically ran circles around everyone else in the room, some twice his age. I realized then, that there are kids, KIDS!, much smarter than I'll ever hope to be in my life.

Sometimes you have to meet these people to believe they exist.

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As a counterpoint, there are real sharp people of all ages. At local meetups, I've met a couple of retirees not orignally in the programming field, (medical doctor, aerospace tech) that have picked up Linux and programming well enough, I'd hire them to build software/hardware for me if they weren't pursuing their own projects. Or the older opera singer that helped me debug code while on a flight and joked, "Programming is music for those that can't sing...". I believe she could succeed in any field, scary, scary, scary smart.

In one of my projects, two of my team mates were in their mid forties. One of them was a mother of two (pointing this out because she didn't have lots of free time to learn new stuff). She didn't know Java, but she was probably a million times smarter than the rest of the team (4 more people, all in their early to mid twenties) combined. She didn't go to college, while the rest of the team came from pretty good schools, with good grades etc. Yet, she picked up things faster than any of us.

So yeah, some people are just sharp by nature - just like some people are cute, strong etc (not saying others can't develop, but it does give the "naturals" an advantage)

It's difficult for me to comment on something that you saw while in this room when I wasn't in the room, but I'm guessing that much of that had to do with the fact that the kid had actually put in the work and did the experimentation to build this community.

How many of the people in that room could say the same? What communities (or anything else) had they built? If they had built something, did they do it on their own as opposed to being someone brought in after the company was already successful? The kid probably ran circles around everyone because he was an expert (on this subject) among managers / developers / designers and anyone else who could probably do anything but run a successful community / e-commerce site.

I think about this sort of thing as a web developer. How many web developers who build client sites have actually built a successful site? How many designers really know how to design something which can sell? If you haven't done it, then you probably have no clue. But if you have been there, then you probably wouldn't be working for someone else either.

You have a very good point. Thought process and vision are what make or break a product. As close as it is to other news aggregators, there may be a perspective that the Founder has that Yahoo team doesn't.

Thought process and vision are what make or break a product.

I would put far more emphasis on execution. Lots of founders with "vision" can spin great stories to investors but can't execute quickly enough, or are unable to deviate from their original vision when the market or other evidence suggests they should.

I'd say Thought process, vision AND execution. He's obviously executed well, so what's left is his vision and thought process behind that vision.

Sometimes it's not that they are smarter it's just that they aren't constrained by current thinking, maybe even the pragmatism that comes from experience.

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