My personal experience has been simply that hiring is hard, so young founders naturally lean towards hiring people they can relate with which of course happens

My personal experience has been simply that hiring is hard, so young founders naturally lean towards hiring people they can relate with which of course happens to be fellow young people. It's laziness and ego disguised as pragmatism. I don't attribute to malice what could equally be explained by ignorance. It's not deliberate ageism, it's the path of least resistance. I would agree that that path is a bad thing overall.