Interesting to note that the average founder age is 30.27 (median is 29). Not that that's old, of course - just that I imagined it'd be younger.
These people were about 10 years old when the Web happened and 15 years old when Napster and digital cameras took off, so they probably haven't written too many snailmail letters, bought CDs or taken photos on film.
Perhaps that gives them a perspective that's more "digitally native" than older people, yet they have more experience than the '90s-born generation.
(I'm one of those "old" people I guess, being born in 1980...)
There is an unconscious bias when reviewing applications (especially during interviews) to vote/side with people that look/act/know the same references/same point in life/etc like you. Since previous YC graduates both recommend and (some) decide who gets in, they match what they know.
- Grew up reading Slashdot, steeped in the values and beliefs of the OSS community.
- Were coming of age during the golden age of blogging ('05-'06) when people with a lot of industry experience were making their insights widely available for the first time. E.g. during the beginning of college when we were all trying to figure out what to do with our lives, suddenly the knowledge of how and why to do a startup became available.
- Coming of age when not suddenly it became possible (but before it easy) to build software that reached a billion people and changed the world.
- Coming of age during the birth of marketing 2.0 -- The Cluetrain Manifesto, Seth Godin, Kathy Sierra, Hugh McCleod, etc.
- Coming of age during the birth of Web 2.0, when suddenly every web business needed to be rebuilt around new design principles, technology (AJAX), and promotional techniques.
- Around for the birth of Y Combinator and The Facebook.
- Impossible to get a job with any possible upward mobility when graduating.
Most of this was happening our sophomore/junior year in college, when suddenly we knew all of this really important world-changing stuff that almost no one with established careers was paying attention to yet.
So yeah, I'm sure our generation isn't unique and wasn't the only one affected by these things, but I do think they probably had a disproportionate impact on us.
Few people who began training for a development career at this time were in it just for quick money.
I would guess that most 40-50 year olds who already have knowledge, contacts and money don't apply to YC, probably because they don't feel that they need it.
I expect that founders at that age are more likely to be coming from a position of experience within their target industry, i.e. solving a problem that they've seen/experienced. They may not be trying to become "X for Y" but solving problem Z that a limited number of clients will pay good money to have solved.
Older founders may have more to risk, so the "go big or go home" model may not be as attractive to them.
As I said, this is a huge generalisation with a lot of guesswork thrown in. I would love to see some more detailed data so that we could draw some conclusions.
This is perhaps an insight into the types of companies YC is funding. They may just have a larger pool of B2B and enterprise companies this session.
The remaining categories will likely have older, more experienced people
That being said I also intuitively assumed a younger age. Most certainly bias on my side since it's the youngest founders I tend to read about online.