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wting

A similar question was asked on Quora recently:

https://www.quora.com/Silicon-Valley/What-do-people-in-Silic...

Some of the companies and founders' ages compiled from the answers:

- Zynga: 41

- LinkedIn: 36

- Salesforce: 35

- Intel: 41, 39

- Qualcomm: 52, 50

- Juniper Networks: 42

- Wikipedia: 35

- Pandora: 35

- GigaOm: 39

- Zipcar: 42

- TechCrunch: 35

- Craigslist: 42

- Netflix: 37

View on HN

Also, from a Kauffman Foundation report:

"The average and median age of U.S.-born tech founders [of companies that have more than $1 million in sales, twenty or more employees, and company branches with fifty or more employees] was thirty-nine when they started their companies. Twice as many were older than fifty as were younger than twenty-five."

http://www.kauffman.org/what-we-do/research/2009/04/educatio...

I know that LinkedIn culturally didn't work crazy hours to get where they were - does anyone know, are any others listed that started out as '9-5' organizations?

I am skeptical of the 60-80 hours thing. It seems like more of a macho thing than a real requirement. The problem is that when you workaholic yourself your productivity per unit time drops, so you're spending more hours but doing as much as you might do in shorter bursts of more focused time. In some cases it's worse... you get total burnout.

The 60-80 hours thing is how computer peeps express their machismo. If we were jocks, we would do like 1000 pushups or something. If you need to spend that much time getting it off the ground, you are doing it wrong.

I see more value in accomplishing stuff in as little hours as possible. It's not about the hours, it's about what you get done.

And once you get stuck, it can be more productive to leave the computer and get some sleep, eat, walk, take a shower, etc. The best ideas or solutions come to you when you're doing something else.

To me, saying you work 60-80 hours means you're either doing something very simple, or you're not doing much at all.

To clarify, that's founders age at founding. Not curret age of founder.

How many of these were first time founders?

A cursory glance tells me none. Jimmy Wales already had money from his investment banker career, he build wikipedia to solve a problem with his 'real' startup. LinkedIn was Reid Hoffman 3rd or 4th social startup. Marc Benioff started his first company in high school.

Not surprising. A common theme at Startup School this year (and probably a common theme in general) was that those who succeeded tried and failed many times over. There is no single skyrocket to success, OK there probably is, but the norm, if you can call it that is one of trial and error, and making intentional changes and improvements until you succeed.

Or it's simply luck. If the odds of succeeding are random, say 1%, then the more you try, the greater the odds you will eventually win the lottery. It would make sense that most of the winners had tried multiple times. I'm not sure it follows that the winners are necessarily more talented than the losers.

That's really inspiring. Relying on the facts above, life Starts at 35! -This is the the age when experience adds to the energy one has.

And at the same time demotivating, if considering that they have founded their first start-up in earlier years.

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