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Older Entrepreneurs Do It Better
- bigtunacan 9y agoNon subscriber link available?
- ereyes01 9y agoClick "web" under the title, it will Google the article title for you. WSJ lets readers who arrive from a Google search read the article without a subscription.
- wilkystyle 9y agoI get the same prompt to sign up or log in...
- elvirs 9y agocopy the title into google and click on the first result, will be able to read the whole thing
- aplorbust 9y agoFull article always available via ampurl: https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/older-entrepreneurs-do-it-better-1518098400 https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/older-entrepreneurs-do-it-b... Use "Reader" mode in the browser to avoid AMP advertising or do something like curl -o 1.htm https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/older-entrepreneurs-do-it-better-1518098400 sed -n -i '/<title>/,/<\/title>/p;/<p>/,/<\/p>/p' 1.htm firefox file:///1.htm For even better results use a text-only browser for reading the news. AMP pages look great in a text-only browser. No ads.
- montrose 9y agoWow, if you use that url plus the Mercury Reader, it works. Thanks so much!
- bigtunacan 9y agoThanks
- montrose 9y agoThe amp url just stopped working. Do you know an alternative?
- nikanj 9y agoOlder entrepreneurs are much less willing to sacrifice their health for the change of making someone else rich. They’re generally harder to push around and intimidate too, making them much less attractive targets for investment.
- eli 9y agoI can't tell if you mean it that way, but that sounds like a good thing.
- kajecounterhack 9y agoYour point is unclear. The point _you responded to_ is saying that silicon valley investment favors youth because they can get better ROI by working younger folks harder and extracting better terms. They're saying older folks are harder to do that to, and you're saying "that sounds good" without specifying who you think it's good for. It's good _for entrepreneurs_ to have more work life balance, not get burned out, and capture more return for their hard work. It's good _for investors_ to get max returns from their investments. There's a set of parameters to maximize returns for both parties. You don't clarify what you mean by "a good thing."
- mycelium 9y ago> You don't clarify what you mean by "a good thing." To be fair to the grandfather comment, that was the point.
- kajecounterhack 9y agoThe grandfather comment was making an observation, not asserting something as being good or bad. The child comment didn't add value because it was unclear.
- chandru89new 9y ago> The child comment didn't add value because it was unclear. I'd like to paraphrase it. "The child comment was unclear so it doesn't appear to add value."
- ejlangev 9y agoThis just in: People who have some experience doing things in general tend to be better at doing those things. In my experience of working at startups they are generally too focused on "disruption" and tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes existing industries do things for valid reasons that you just don't understand yet and you need to in order to change them. Instead the community looks up to those fortunate (often just lucky) enough to be successful and tries to derive a signal about why they succeeded in the first place that doesn't really exist. Experience in business or an industry gives you understanding of things it might take years to learn and helps you avoid making simple mistakes that can ruin your company.
- staunch 9y agoThis is just semantic confusion. A local restaurant is not a highly scaleable technology company. They're both "new businesses" but radically different in every other way. It's an apples and oranges comparison. One good definition of a Silicon Valley "startup" is Paul Graham's: "A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth." http://paulgraham.com/growth.html http://paulgraham.com/growth.html
- vadimberman 9y agoOverall, I agree with the premise (seeing all the silly mistakes the younger folks - including myself earlier in life - do), but it also differs by area. "Hip" stuff, B2C, is an area where the younger folks may fare better because they know the segment of the market which is willing to spend more (namely, other younger folks). On the other hand, B2B requires an extensive network of connections, knowing the corporate bureaucracy, and a lot of patience. It's very unlikely under-30s will have advantage here. All in all, us old farts are less likely to play by the VCs' destructive narrative of "all or nothing" and aim at the more realistic "much or something". Seriously aiming to be a Facebook or a Google is like including a lottery win in your budget. And, of course, bullshit radars honed by experience never get obsolete.
- montrose 9y agoI believe this is true for businesses in general, but that doesn't mean it's true for startups. Startups are a tiny proportion of businesses, and things work very differently in that world. Exactly how and why they work differently is a fascinating (and very useful) topic. And yet instead of exploring that interesting topic, reporter after reporter goes for the easy debunk-the-young-hotshot-myth article, using an argument based on conflating startups with businesses in general.