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I think the the younger folks are more likely to spot an outsize opportunity where no one was looking at all, whereas an older person might be more aware of an

I think the the younger folks are more likely to spot an outsize opportunity where no one was looking at all, whereas an older person might be more aware of an incremental change in an existing business model that presents a new opportunity.

mindcrime 8y ago
I think the the younger folks are more likely to spot an outsize opportunity where no one was looking at all, I hear variations of this refrain a lot. But I wonder, is there any particular evidence to support this, or even a reasonable sounding theory to explain why it is likely to be so?
- aswanson 8y ago
  A lot of the more "visible" larger outcomes seem to be based on how people socially interact moreso than technical innovation. Older people generally aren't first wavers in new means of sharing their lives, e.g. facebook, twitter, snapchat etc were all just new ways of talking. I know thats ridiculously reductive in scope, but it just seems older folk are more dispositioned to attack problems that provide a clearer path to renumeration, while younger folks seem more focused on doing something cool that technology enables. I have 0 data to back up that armchair analysis.
JangoSteve 8y ago
Are they though? Even looking at examples like Google and Facebook, it's not like the founders saw an opportunity where no one else was looking and went for it. In both cases, they built something that interested them with no eye toward opportunity (at least if the information we've been given about their early motivations is true), and then at some point down the road saw the same opportunity that everyone else already saw (in the sense that both search engines and social networks were already crowded spaces with companies that seemed to be the incumbent winners). If anything, it was less that they saw opportunity where no one else was looking, and more that they saw opportunity where _everyone_ else was looking and went for it anyway. Everyone else thought the opportunities were so obvious as to have already been solved. Search engines were already solved by Yahoo!, social networking was already solved by MySpace, book-selling was already solved by Borders and Barnes & Noble. Maybe younger people tend to do things that don't make rational sense from a business perspective, and those are usually the things that become outsize successes in the face of the status quo. Of course, they're also the things that fail way more often than they succeed. That could explain both phenomena, where younger people founded the giant success stories and older people founded more successful things on average.
tluyben2 8y ago
I might just know the wrong people and read the wrong press but I do not see proof of this anywhere. People generally copy and improve, including almost all success stories. Everything they did was done, they just did it better and/or bigger. There are surely counter examples, but, as far as I can find, those are a minority.

mindcrime 8y ago

I think the the younger folks are more likely to spot an outsize opportunity where no one was looking at all, I hear variations of this refrain a lot. But I wonder, is there any particular evidence to support this, or even a reasonable sounding theory to explain why it is likely to be so?

aswanson 8y ago
A lot of the more "visible" larger outcomes seem to be based on how people socially interact moreso than technical innovation. Older people generally aren't first wavers in new means of sharing their lives, e.g. facebook, twitter, snapchat etc were all just new ways of talking. I know thats ridiculously reductive in scope, but it just seems older folk are more dispositioned to attack problems that provide a clearer path to renumeration, while younger folks seem more focused on doing something cool that technology enables. I have 0 data to back up that armchair analysis.

JangoSteve 8y ago

Are they though? Even looking at examples like Google and Facebook, it's not like the founders saw an opportunity where no one else was looking and went for it. In both cases, they built something that interested them with no eye toward opportunity (at least if the information we've been given about their early motivations is true), and then at some point down the road saw the same opportunity that everyone else already saw (in the sense that both search engines and social networks were already crowded spaces with companies that seemed to be the incumbent winners). If anything, it was less that they saw opportunity where no one else was looking, and more that they saw opportunity where _everyone_ else was looking and went for it anyway. Everyone else thought the opportunities were so obvious as to have already been solved. Search engines were already solved by Yahoo!, social networking was already solved by MySpace, book-selling was already solved by Borders and Barnes & Noble. Maybe younger people tend to do things that don't make rational sense from a business perspective, and those are usually the things that become outsize successes in the face of the status quo. Of course, they're also the things that fail way more often than they succeed. That could explain both phenomena, where younger people founded the giant success stories and older people founded more successful things on average.

tluyben2 8y ago

I might just know the wrong people and read the wrong press but I do not see proof of this anywhere. People generally copy and improve, including almost all success stories. Everything they did was done, they just did it better and/or bigger. There are surely counter examples, but, as far as I can find, those are a minority.