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The story we hear the most is of young CEOs. We don't hear about the 100x failures of those who try the same. PG supports youth doing it because cost of family/

by gdilla 7y ago

The story we hear the most is of young CEOs. We don't hear about the 100x failures of those who try the same. PG supports youth doing it because cost of family/personal obligation is lower, which is true, but at the same time, at the time he was talking about low capital software startups, the kind he was interested in when YC started. But the flip side of the coin, is having 20 years of experience and domain knowledge, and a rolodex of potential customers (and relationships) to milk with an idea you know will solve a need. It could be a capital intensive endevor, and not a unicorn, but still good. We don't hear a lot about those as celebrated stories in the media.

neilv 7y ago
When learning from a successful young CEO icon, we need a healthy balance of humility and skepticism, so that we benefit from the good stuff (e.g., sincere bits they learned by virtue of their unusual experiences and access), but so that we aren't taking investment advice from a lottery winner. Nor do we want to be buying nutritional supplements ("vision", "smarts") pitched by a fitness influencer who actually used steroids ("family money/connections", "terrific luck", "backstabbing").
bachmeier 7y ago
> The story we hear the most is of young CEOs. The thing about this is that even pointing to someone that was a successful CEO at 26 doesn't tell you much about whether it's better to be a young founder. Someone that's a successful founder at 26 may well have been a successful founder at 56 but they didn't need to be a successful founder at that time. There are lots of reasons to not start a successful company in your youth, and those same people still have 30 or more years to do so.
JohnFen 7y ago
> We don't hear about the 100x failures of those who try the same. We also don't hear about the failures that most successful people have had on the way to success. All of the people that I've known who have had success also had a series of failures that preceded it. It's just that nobody is very interested in talking about the failures -- which is too bad, I think. We learn through failing. As the old saying goes: "I've never learned anything by being right."

by gdilla 7y ago

neilv 7y ago

When learning from a successful young CEO icon, we need a healthy balance of humility and skepticism, so that we benefit from the good stuff (e.g., sincere bits they learned by virtue of their unusual experiences and access), but so that we aren't taking investment advice from a lottery winner. Nor do we want to be buying nutritional supplements ("vision", "smarts") pitched by a fitness influencer who actually used steroids ("family money/connections", "terrific luck", "backstabbing").

bachmeier 7y ago

> The story we hear the most is of young CEOs. The thing about this is that even pointing to someone that was a successful CEO at 26 doesn't tell you much about whether it's better to be a young founder. Someone that's a successful founder at 26 may well have been a successful founder at 56 but they didn't need to be a successful founder at that time. There are lots of reasons to not start a successful company in your youth, and those same people still have 30 or more years to do so.

JohnFen 7y ago

> We don't hear about the 100x failures of those who try the same. We also don't hear about the failures that most successful people have had on the way to success. All of the people that I've known who have had success also had a series of failures that preceded it. It's just that nobody is very interested in talking about the failures -- which is too bad, I think. We learn through failing. As the old saying goes: "I've never learned anything by being right."