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I suspect that there's no good reason that a 25 year-old can't be a great startup CEO. I think one key tricky part is that -- even if the 25yo starts with bein

by neilv 3y ago

I suspect that there's no good reason that a 25 year-old can't be a great startup CEO. I think one key tricky part is that -- even if the 25yo starts with being all-around smart, and unusually aware&humble, yet nevertheless tackling something big -- is that it's very hard to know when they should listen to team/advisors (and which), vs. when they should do a contrary thing that they think is the smart thing. Maybe that's doable well enough, if they have all those good qualities, and happen to be exposed to a good team/advisors. (Side note: It doesn't help that various facets of the fields are filled with bad practices/advice, as well as outright intentional deception and manipulation. If you read PG's essays early on, that was a time when you might expect a fellow techie and businessperson to have smart and well-intentioned advice, wanting you to succeed. That's absolutely not the norm anymore: you're much more likely to get bad advice today, no matter where you look, and more likely to encounter individuals and institutions trying to manipulate you. Even when you can filter that out first-hand, you're still getting a lot of it second-hand, through their influences on smart&decent people who you do let influence you.)

digging 3y ago
> I suspect that there's no good reason that a 25 year-old can't be a great startup CEO. There's exactly one: Learning takes time. The smartest, kindest, most level-headed 25 y/o is not going to be as good a leader as their 35 y/o self, assuming they continue to build on their leadership skills. Now we could say, well, maybe those 25 year-old CEOs overwhelmingly exhibit degraded leadership skills by the time they're 35. That's a statistic that's possible. But I think it would point toward some seriously prevalent burnout, not an inherent benefit of being 25. It may be easier to be positive at 25, but I don't think the ceiling for positivity is higher at 25 than at 35.
crossroadsguy 3y ago
There are too many good reasons that 25 year olds can't be a good startup CEO. One of them is complete lack of experience and almost complete lack of knowledge on how fatigue, stress, anxiety (or health issues in general) etc affect people. Because until 25 these doesn't even resigner on you or your body in most cases. But yes, if you meant a "good" start CEO as in "good for the startup" then yeah I would say what you said is possible or likely.

by neilv 3y ago

digging 3y ago

> I suspect that there's no good reason that a 25 year-old can't be a great startup CEO. There's exactly one: Learning takes time. The smartest, kindest, most level-headed 25 y/o is not going to be as good a leader as their 35 y/o self, assuming they continue to build on their leadership skills. Now we could say, well, maybe those 25 year-old CEOs overwhelmingly exhibit degraded leadership skills by the time they're 35. That's a statistic that's possible. But I think it would point toward some seriously prevalent burnout, not an inherent benefit of being 25. It may be easier to be positive at 25, but I don't think the ceiling for positivity is higher at 25 than at 35.

crossroadsguy 3y ago

There are too many good reasons that 25 year olds can't be a good startup CEO. One of them is complete lack of experience and almost complete lack of knowledge on how fatigue, stress, anxiety (or health issues in general) etc affect people. Because until 25 these doesn't even resigner on you or your body in most cases. But yes, if you meant a "good" start CEO as in "good for the startup" then yeah I would say what you said is possible or likely.