So I actually think the flip side of this is that the founders finding success tend to be much older — in their late 30s or early 40s — because the green space

So I actually think the flip side of this is that the founders finding success tend to be much older — in their late 30s or early 40s — because the green space that’s available for SaaS focuses on niche problem sets with mastery of a field required to even define a product. This path to success is becoming the norm, but it happens quietly because “guy leaves director-level role at a global bank to build a billion dollar fintech startup” isn’t as appealing of a story to the media. This kind of founder is much less of a risk in many ways than a younger one, but while the founder may be willing to live off savings for a year or two, the talent they would need to surround themselves with is also more experienced, with domain knowledge themselves. So why bother with a $500k seed round when it’s going to take $5M at a minimum to take a real crack at it? Now that we’re out of the “SaaS all the things” phase of this economy, you can’t just throw a bunch of overachieving 20 year olds at every problem.