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Comment by meric | Hacker News Reader

This is a cliche, but worth bringing up. Sanders, founder of KFC, started selling fried chicken at 40, and KFC founded when he was 62.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonel_Sanders

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Those were also pretty different times. Nowadays we read almost everyday about teenagers who start and sell startups and I think this aggravates the sense of urgency in most of us who are still under 30 and are not yet on the front page of TechCrunch.

You read about these teenager because they are interesting to read about.

Who wants to read about a 50-60 yo professional CEO who just sold his Nth company doing some boring-as-ass Java enterprise thing? No one. Not in the TC crowd. There's nothing to fantasize about.

The thing to keep in mind about those stories is that Man Bites Dog is a headline, whereas Dog Bites Man doesn't see print at all.

The teens gets print because they're absurd outliers; you don't hear about the 56 year old finding big success with his startup not because it doesn't happen, but because it happens regular enough to be too boring to mention.

He's not the only late starter, check out the ages of some great composers, some of them are quite late!

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music/infographic-great-co...

"Old Masters and Young Geniuses: The Two Life Cycles of Artistic Creativity" by David W. Galenson touches on the same topic: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8019.html

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