3 ms·

Fred Wilson: The Age Question (Why younger founders have an advantage)

16 points by farmer 19y ago

donna 19y ago
what I've noticed throughout my career in the computer industry is this: it takes open minds to blaze trails (age is irrelevant). Ones ability to adapt and evolve to newer mediums. So many times I hear how painful the computer is to use from those over 36 years of age.
ivan 19y ago
Maybe some stats (similar to those co-founder stats) tell they have some advantages, but as Donna wrote age is irrelevant.
- donna 19y ago
  Here's something interesting http://farrukh.wordpress.com/2006/05/28/does-age-matter-in-advertising-agencies/ http://farrukh.wordpress.com/2006/05/28/does-age-matter-in-advertising-agencies/ "The need for "intellectual curiosity" is being stressed."
  - Alex3917 19y ago
    Why is it that Silicon Valley types keep saying that intellectual curiosity is as or more important than IQ, but virtually zero research has ever been done on IC whereas there are hundreds of books on IQ? (I have this long list of books that should have been written, but haven't been.)
    - donna 19y ago
      The "intellectual curiosity" piece was written by a gentleman in Dubai, UAE.--not by a silicon valley type.
amichail 19y ago
One problem is that a CS degree does not encourage students to be creative thinkers at the application level. The focus is mostly on implementation issues. So younger entrepreneurs without a CS degree might have an advantage in that regard. The solution IMO is to make CS degrees more balanced, encouraging more creative application-level thinking.
- gyro_robo 19y ago
  I would say "creative" and "degree" are mutually exclusive. There is no cookie-cutter approach that will yield originality.
- Alex3917 19y ago
  Business school doesn't teach students to come up with good business ideas. And writing classes only teach grammar and style, not what makes something insightful. I suspect it's because these things are said to be functions of "intelligence" and "creativity." They're not. So why don't schools teach students how to have good ideas? Most decisions about what to teach are presupposed by emergent systemic factors. Take, for example, time_on_task. Our educational system is designed around the idea that achievement is a function of ToT. Fortunately, this isn't a philosophical belief. It's an empirically testable claim. A claim that has, in fact, been tested again and again. Unhappily, the results are pretty much what you'd expect. No correlation. So how many credit hours does it take to teach someone how to write insightfully? Or have good business ideas? If you can't put a number on it, colleges essentially aren't allowed to teach it. By law, actually. (Think about how financial aid works, and the rules concerning whether or not you can be on your parent's health insurance.) PG himself has said that he basically won't fund you unless you've been in the classroom a certain number of hours -- the number required to graduate. So how do you learn these skills? The answers aren't really in any one book, but if you take a year off from college and sit in the local cafe reading every decent book on the subject ever written, you'll more or less figure it out. Of course you'll lose many friends, your parents will hate you, you won't have health insurance, and everyone will generally think of you as a loser. But that's another issue entirely. :-) edit: By "intelligence" and "creativity" I just mean things that can't be taught, not literally that success is zero percent innate.
gyro_robo 19y ago
The biggest advantage is enthusiasm. When I was younger I was excited about everything in the world of computers. If I combined my experience and knowledge now with my enthusiasm from back then, I'd be an industry titan. Nothing's really that interesting anymore, and when virtual reality gets good I'm locking myself in a room with my virtual girlfriend and staying there.
- amichail 19y ago
  Computers were a big deal when I was in junior high. Learning assembly language was a status symbol. Today students take computers for granted. Most students now can't program at all.
  - gyro_robo 19y ago
    I can hardly wait to shake my fist and yell at kids to stay the heck off my lawn!
  - altay 19y ago
    Today students take computers for granted. You say that like it's a bad thing. But it's really a good thing, for both the general population and also for those select few who do know how to program. (Also, I'd bet that the percentage of students who can program is a lot higher now than it was when you were in junior high.)
    - amichail 19y ago
      I don't know about percentages, but I would bet that when I was in junior high, students who learned programming took it much more seriously than students who do today.
      - amichail 19y ago
        This is what students used to read in junior high/high school: http://www.csbruce.com/~csbruce/cbm/transactor/ http://www.csbruce.com/~csbruce/cbm/transactor/
neilc 19y ago
Familarity with social networks and the latest Internet fads is definitely an advantage for people considering consumer-oriented Internet startups, but those aren't all the startups out there. Heck, consumer-oriented, "Web 2.0", advertising-dependent startups are a minority of all the technology startups out there, let alone startups in general. (I often find the focus on consumer-oriented startups to be perplexing: IMHO, most of the cool startup ideas, and most of the money to be made, doesn't lie in the consumer sphere.) So sure, if you're trying to start another MySpace or FB, it helps to be younger and more familiar with the latest technology trends. But there are countless startups for which that isn't relevant.
- pg 19y ago
  But consumer-oriented advertising-dependent web startups are quite a large fraction of the Nasdaq, based on Google alone.
  - startupper 19y ago
    A large fraction, e.g. 1/5 can still be a minority.
- ced 19y ago
  Can you give examples? I do have at least one idea which is not consumer-oriented... My problem is that since these domains are not in-your-face advertised, or talked about here, it's harder to evaluate the market and the competition. Plus, these apps usually need promotion of some kind, word-of-mouth doesn't really spread otherwise.
  - neilc 19y ago
    I think there are many examples. A lot of my personal background is in database systems: off the top of my head, non-consumer oriented startups in that domain include startups that are trying to beat Oracle at transaction-processing (EnterpriseDB, MySQL AB to some extent), and a whole bunch of startups in the data warehousing area (Neteeza, Greenplum, ExtenDB, ParAccel, Datallegro, etc.) In data stream processing / complex event processing, there is StreamBase, Coral8, Apama (although they've been acquired by Progress), etc.). There are lots of hard, enterprise technology problems that haven't been solved very well, and that are ripe for entrepreneurs. There are similar problems in data integration, networking, virtualization, security, storage, DRM, etc. And that's without even thinking about vertical markets. For example, I think if you sat down in a room with an industry expert in, say, the oil & gas industry and a few smart hackers, you could come up with a way to apply computer science to improve oil and gas prospecting. There are dozens of similar vertical markets, where some smart hackers with a modicum of domain-specific knowledge could really make a pretty significant improvement on the state-of-the-art, IMHO. The group-think among certain communities on the Internet toward consumer-oriented, Web 2.0, advertising-dependent web startups is really pretty amazing -- I just get terribly bored reading about all the different people building Web 2.0 task management web apps and similar junk. There are lots of other kinds of startups out there -- it's just that YC doesn't focus on funding them, and TechCrunch doesn't cover them, so this particular community of developers never learns about them.
Tichy 19y ago
It seems to me that at least according to that article, it also depends on what you consider to be "exciting". If you consider Twitter exciting, OK - maybe I am too old to be excited by that (been there done that with the social networking, not that excited anymore). Targeting young people might work best for other young people. But what about startups that target old people? Newspapers are reporting about the aging of society all the time, but Web 2.0 doesn't really seem to account for it yet? Personally, I would consider a startup targeting old people exciting, and maybe older founders would have an advantage there.

16 points by farmer 19y ago

donna 19y ago

what I've noticed throughout my career in the computer industry is this: it takes open minds to blaze trails (age is irrelevant). Ones ability to adapt and evolve to newer mediums. So many times I hear how painful the computer is to use from those over 36 years of age.

ivan 19y ago

Maybe some stats (similar to those co-founder stats) tell they have some advantages, but as Donna wrote age is irrelevant.

donna 19y ago
Here's something interesting http://farrukh.wordpress.com/2006/05/28/does-age-matter-in-advertising-agencies/ http://farrukh.wordpress.com/2006/05/28/does-age-matter-in-advertising-agencies/ "The need for "intellectual curiosity" is being stressed."
- Alex3917 19y ago
  Why is it that Silicon Valley types keep saying that intellectual curiosity is as or more important than IQ, but virtually zero research has ever been done on IC whereas there are hundreds of books on IQ? (I have this long list of books that should have been written, but haven't been.)
  - donna 19y ago
    The "intellectual curiosity" piece was written by a gentleman in Dubai, UAE.--not by a silicon valley type.

amichail 19y ago

One problem is that a CS degree does not encourage students to be creative thinkers at the application level. The focus is mostly on implementation issues. So younger entrepreneurs without a CS degree might have an advantage in that regard. The solution IMO is to make CS degrees more balanced, encouraging more creative application-level thinking.

gyro_robo 19y ago
I would say "creative" and "degree" are mutually exclusive. There is no cookie-cutter approach that will yield originality.
Alex3917 19y ago
Business school doesn't teach students to come up with good business ideas. And writing classes only teach grammar and style, not what makes something insightful. I suspect it's because these things are said to be functions of "intelligence" and "creativity." They're not. So why don't schools teach students how to have good ideas? Most decisions about what to teach are presupposed by emergent systemic factors. Take, for example, time_on_task. Our educational system is designed around the idea that achievement is a function of ToT. Fortunately, this isn't a philosophical belief. It's an empirically testable claim. A claim that has, in fact, been tested again and again. Unhappily, the results are pretty much what you'd expect. No correlation. So how many credit hours does it take to teach someone how to write insightfully? Or have good business ideas? If you can't put a number on it, colleges essentially aren't allowed to teach it. By law, actually. (Think about how financial aid works, and the rules concerning whether or not you can be on your parent's health insurance.) PG himself has said that he basically won't fund you unless you've been in the classroom a certain number of hours -- the number required to graduate. So how do you learn these skills? The answers aren't really in any one book, but if you take a year off from college and sit in the local cafe reading every decent book on the subject ever written, you'll more or less figure it out. Of course you'll lose many friends, your parents will hate you, you won't have health insurance, and everyone will generally think of you as a loser. But that's another issue entirely. :-) edit: By "intelligence" and "creativity" I just mean things that can't be taught, not literally that success is zero percent innate.

gyro_robo 19y ago

The biggest advantage is enthusiasm. When I was younger I was excited about everything in the world of computers. If I combined my experience and knowledge now with my enthusiasm from back then, I'd be an industry titan. Nothing's really that interesting anymore, and when virtual reality gets good I'm locking myself in a room with my virtual girlfriend and staying there.

amichail 19y ago
Computers were a big deal when I was in junior high. Learning assembly language was a status symbol. Today students take computers for granted. Most students now can't program at all.
- gyro_robo 19y ago
  I can hardly wait to shake my fist and yell at kids to stay the heck off my lawn!
- altay 19y ago
  Today students take computers for granted. You say that like it's a bad thing. But it's really a good thing, for both the general population and also for those select few who do know how to program. (Also, I'd bet that the percentage of students who can program is a lot higher now than it was when you were in junior high.)
  - amichail 19y ago
    I don't know about percentages, but I would bet that when I was in junior high, students who learned programming took it much more seriously than students who do today.
    - amichail 19y ago
      This is what students used to read in junior high/high school: http://www.csbruce.com/~csbruce/cbm/transactor/ http://www.csbruce.com/~csbruce/cbm/transactor/

neilc 19y ago

Familarity with social networks and the latest Internet fads is definitely an advantage for people considering consumer-oriented Internet startups, but those aren't all the startups out there. Heck, consumer-oriented, "Web 2.0", advertising-dependent startups are a minority of all the technology startups out there, let alone startups in general. (I often find the focus on consumer-oriented startups to be perplexing: IMHO, most of the cool startup ideas, and most of the money to be made, doesn't lie in the consumer sphere.) So sure, if you're trying to start another MySpace or FB, it helps to be younger and more familiar with the latest technology trends. But there are countless startups for which that isn't relevant.

pg 19y ago
But consumer-oriented advertising-dependent web startups are quite a large fraction of the Nasdaq, based on Google alone.
- startupper 19y ago
  A large fraction, e.g. 1/5 can still be a minority.
ced 19y ago
Can you give examples? I do have at least one idea which is not consumer-oriented... My problem is that since these domains are not in-your-face advertised, or talked about here, it's harder to evaluate the market and the competition. Plus, these apps usually need promotion of some kind, word-of-mouth doesn't really spread otherwise.
- neilc 19y ago
  I think there are many examples. A lot of my personal background is in database systems: off the top of my head, non-consumer oriented startups in that domain include startups that are trying to beat Oracle at transaction-processing (EnterpriseDB, MySQL AB to some extent), and a whole bunch of startups in the data warehousing area (Neteeza, Greenplum, ExtenDB, ParAccel, Datallegro, etc.) In data stream processing / complex event processing, there is StreamBase, Coral8, Apama (although they've been acquired by Progress), etc.). There are lots of hard, enterprise technology problems that haven't been solved very well, and that are ripe for entrepreneurs. There are similar problems in data integration, networking, virtualization, security, storage, DRM, etc. And that's without even thinking about vertical markets. For example, I think if you sat down in a room with an industry expert in, say, the oil & gas industry and a few smart hackers, you could come up with a way to apply computer science to improve oil and gas prospecting. There are dozens of similar vertical markets, where some smart hackers with a modicum of domain-specific knowledge could really make a pretty significant improvement on the state-of-the-art, IMHO. The group-think among certain communities on the Internet toward consumer-oriented, Web 2.0, advertising-dependent web startups is really pretty amazing -- I just get terribly bored reading about all the different people building Web 2.0 task management web apps and similar junk. There are lots of other kinds of startups out there -- it's just that YC doesn't focus on funding them, and TechCrunch doesn't cover them, so this particular community of developers never learns about them.

Tichy 19y ago

It seems to me that at least according to that article, it also depends on what you consider to be "exciting". If you consider Twitter exciting, OK - maybe I am too old to be excited by that (been there done that with the social networking, not that excited anymore). Targeting young people might work best for other young people. But what about startups that target old people? Newspapers are reporting about the aging of society all the time, but Web 2.0 doesn't really seem to account for it yet? Personally, I would consider a startup targeting old people exciting, and maybe older founders would have an advantage there.