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Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship
- dalek2point3 8y agohere is the full paper in case anyone is interested: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/Age%20and%20High%20Growth%20Entrepreneurship.pdf http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/Ag...
- mcbreezy 8y agoI'm 37. I constantly remind myself that Craigslist, Wikipedia, Salesforces, Intel, etc. were founded by someone >=35 years of age[0], and that, since I live a healthy lifestyle have at least 30 great years ahead of me (on average). https://readwrite.com/2013/09/27/jimmy-wales-to-silicon-valley-grow-up/ https://readwrite.com/2013/09/27/jimmy-wales-to-silicon-vall...
- redm 8y agoAs I've gotten older (ironically) I've felt this should be the case; key decisions have such an impact on the success or failure of a startup, it's much more likely you make the right key decisions the more experience and wisdom you have.
- thisrod 8y agoPG has written about that. He made the point that, in 1998, the people with experience and wisdom all agreed that the world had enough search engines already.
- jjallen 8y agoThis one reminds me of when years ago I wrote about the "already-exists" startup fallacy/bias: https://medium.com/@halfhenry/how-to-tell-when-you-should-and-shouldnt-start-a-company-d8ec4d90347f https://medium.com/@halfhenry/how-to-tell-when-you-should-an...
- tibbetts 8y agoWell they were only off by one or two.
- rimliu 8y agoI have an issue with "all". Unless he did interview all the people with experience and wisdom. Otherwise it is just a soundbite.
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- mrkstu 8y agoThis aligns with my observation and current impulse. I've been extremely hesitant to do my own startup- imposter syndrome maybe, but more likely healthy skepticism about the odds for success. Now that I'm in my mid-40s I'd be much more comfortable taking on the task. Wide life experience, learning to interact with and observe human tendencies, and learning to overcome internal and external obstacles seems like fertile ground for business success.
- Russell91 8y ago4 of 5 of the biggest tech company founders were in their early 20s. So the biggest ideas clearly slanted towards young visionary founders, but the statistics do skew back towards older founders for all but the largest companies.
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- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoI think this is very important, basically that if you look at the data by something like market cap it would probably skew very young. E.g. AirBnB and Dropbox are (IIRC, may have changed by now) the majority of total valuation for ycom, and those companies were both started by early 20-somethings.
- sulam 8y agoYC itself skews young, at least in part I'd say because the sort of help it provides is something that is more needed the younger you are. It's vanishingly unlikely that I will need YC's money, connections, or imprimatur for a startup at this stage in my life. When I was 24 starting a company, it would have been hugely helpful.
- johnny313 8y agoThis seems to redefine the question away from "what does a successful entrepreneur look like" in an attempt to maintain the narrative that "young visionaries" are the most successful.
- mcbreezy 8y agoWhich 4/5? Zuck yes, Bezos no, Page/Brin: doubtful they were early 20s. Maybe 20s, but not early 20s. EDIT: Page was 25 and Brin was 24: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Page
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- deuslovult 8y agoI don't think this is surprising, but I'm also not surprised that VCs and accelerators still trend toward younger founders. It makes sense to me that older (successful) founders likely leverage their own experience and network to a greater extent, but this isn't necessarily what seed stage investors are looking for. I think investors are more in the game of betting on people/teams, injecting their own experience and network as leverage. Older founders have less need, therefore less leverage- and older founders without these support networks are poorly positioned anyway. Theres a big difference between running a successful small business and architecting a tech startup.
- digi_owl 8y agoAge also makes one less susceptible to the snake in the expensive suit.
- tibbetts 8y agoVenture capital is a hits business, and if you want to invest in an entrepreneur there is benefit towards getting them the first time. Marc Benioff has 13 years of Oracle experience when he started Salesforce, and he already had plenty of access to capital and expertise.
- leonroy 8y agoOne thing to note is that 'young college drop out makes billions' is a more compelling story than 'middle aged, well educated person with good savings makes billions'. The former sells more clicks and hence advertising dollars - it conjures the notion that anyone can do it. The latter suggests at least a decade of work experience, probably an education and some money. It's clear which story is going to end up trending on the news and the public's consciousness.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago> 'young college drop out makes billions' > 'middle aged, well educated person with good savings makes billions'. Do we know if anyone has A/B test these two headlines? Finding fault with middle-aged-well-educated-person-with-good-savings*, who became a billionaire in under 10 years, shouldn't be too hard for the media, and therefore plenty of things to whip up a scandal about.
- gitgud 8y ago'young college drop out makes billions' *Translates to: "someone made a lot of money + no effort required!"
- TeMPOraL 8y ago"... just one weird trick. Maybe I can do that too! I should read this article - maybe some parts of the secret are revealed in it."
- Bucephalus355 8y agoIn art the term for this is “young geniuses and old masters”. We are all familiar with the trope of a ‘young genius’ but I think it says something that art, a field older than any language or building, has a specific category carved out for those who reach distinguished success in old age...
- blawson 8y agoThe paper doesn’t appear to be able identify more than the age distribution of the founders from the dataset, unfortunately. Would be interesting to know how many of the successful older founders were unsuccessful younger founders previously.
- jknoepfler 8y agoI honestly can't understand why this would shock anyone with experience in engineering. As a senior developer, I'm vastly more able to realize ideas than I was even three years ago. I also know vastly more. I'm able to understand cutting-edge systems and language research that I couldn't before. I'm able to design systems quickly and more reliably. I'm able to separate good ideas from bad ideas more reliably. I'm better with people and managing my own ego, and therefore able to navigate interpersonal situations more reliably. I'm also financially stable and have deep savings, so I'm able to take time off to pursue ideas more reliably. After a few more years, particularly as I gain leadership experience, I expect to be even more effective. There's literally no down-side to getting older in terms of my ability to bootstrap a successful company.
- sleet 8y agoI agree but there's probably a limit on that sentiment. If you start a family you are likely to become more risk adverse, this would increase again as you approach retirement.
- drawkbox 8y agoOn the flipside, kids can add immense motivation and drive. Also you can dictate your schedule more to spend more time with kids/family if you work from home more. I went independent/entrepreneur full on when my son was starting high school, I wish I had done it earlier and done more projects/products for myself earlier.
- watwut 8y agoMaybe the young risk too much. In that case, being more risk averse could be statistical advantage. There seems to be persistent underlying assumption that more risk taking is always better, that is unlikely to be true. Optimal risk taking amount is not necessary "highest possible".
- codazoda 8y agoTrue, but ~45 may be a golden age again. By then your kids may be starting to becoming self sufficient, retirement is still 20 years off, and you've lived through a fair number of financial problems. Your retirement plans might be coming together and the world is starting to look more rosey. Plus, you find yourself feeling like you're nearing the end of your "youth"; you're aged but you still feel good. Perhaps you become less worried about the risk and you're well trained and ready to take on a complex challenge. I can dream.
- montrose 8y agoIf this result is surprising to HN readers, it is probably because this list of the last 100 IPOs is also surprising: https://www.iposcoop.com/last-100-ipos/ https://www.iposcoop.com/last-100-ipos/ Only 19 of the 100 most recent IPOs are classified as "technology" companies. The rest are in categories like "health care" and "oil and gas." There are a lot of high-growth companies that are not startups in the classic sense of starting from nothing and winning by building a better mousetrap. E.g. pharmaceutical companies commercializing research, where the founder is a PI and probably a tenured professor who's at least 40.
- volgo 8y agoI think there's a little bit of confirmation bias mixed with a bit of jealousy toward younger developers. The fact is, technology doesn't really matter that much to the success of a business. Business sense, ability to spot what's next, and a fair bit of risk taking attitude are what matters. Older engineers don't fare better than younger engineers in starting a business not because they're worse at engineering, but that after a certain point engineering skills simply don't matter. SAP, Adobe, IBM, all have terrible engineering culture, but rake in money. Facebook started with janky PHP. There are only rare instances where the technology itself was the differentiator in business. Maybe if you're working on advanced AI or weapon design or something
- tibbetts 8y agoWeapon design is all about government contracts, which generally require experience. Even Iron Man was using his dad’s existing corporate vehicle. Advanced AI usually depends on finding a business model, which requires experience. And places like Deep Mind were started by researchers who had been at it a few decades.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoI have the feeling weapons design & manufacturing looks the way it looks because the advanced countries aren't really fighting and expecting to fight any serious war with each other. This makes it safe for the contractors to suck excessive amounts of money from the government while delivering very little, and for the whole endeavour to become one big political battlefield. War was always the thing that connected humanity to physical reality - 2+2 may very well be 10000 on the procurement document, but it'd better equal 4 when you're trying to aim your cannons at the invading forces. With no war, effectiveness (and thus good engineering) is no longer a strong criterion for success of a weapon design.
- sharemywin 8y agoI think the point was there aren't a lot of young developers/entrepreneurs working on how to make the property casualty preferred vendor relationships work better. Because that type of business would take years of time in that industry to both understand the problems and make the contacts.
- s2g 8y agoWhat were these people doing at 25/30/35/40?
- drenvuk 8y agoShort answer: becoming experts at their craft, building business relationships and filling their coffers. Trying to start a successful business is much easier when you know how to get stuff done, have access to people who can get stuff done in areas you can't, and have enough money to buy time, help and resources to get stuff done. Young people typically are lacking in one or more of those areas but sometimes it works out.
- kozikow 8y agoI would like to see the data broken down by startup profile. I suspect that the ideal age differs between B2B and B2C startups. B2C have smaller chance of success, but the success is bigger. Ideal B2C founder is young. Most of enormous tech successes (e.g. Facebook, Google) are B2C companies founded by founders before 30. B2B have higher chance of success, but the success is smaller. Ideal B2B founder is middle-aged. There are more succesfull B2B startups than B2C starups, what increases the total mean.
- AstralStorm 8y agoPlease provide examples of B2C success that are other than Apple, Google or Facebook founded by people under 30. (No, Microsoft is B2B.)
- smoyer 8y agoI dug up the links for two past age polls on HN to see what the average age of the HN reader might be: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039 PG's comment suggests that you shouldn't trust self-reported data on HN but it's interesting that polls taken in 2009 and 2013 are at least "eyeball correlated" (the top 5+ age brackets are in the same order). I have a few more thoughts that are probably more like wild guesses (since you can't assume an even distribution of start-up founders over that population) but my gut is telling me that if you're here you're more likely to be a founder than say Slashdot. Since the last poll was so long ago, here's an updated one for 2018 with categories for founders versus non-founders in each age bracket: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16809398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16809398