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"Higher values for Number of Employees/Contractors (FTEs) are weakly associated with higher values for Average Age of Company's Founders (Rounded)" I had a sus

"Higher values for Number of Employees/Contractors (FTEs) are weakly associated with higher values for Average Age of Company's Founders (Rounded)" I had a suspicion that that might be true, but I wonder why that is? Perhaps older founders tackle problems that need more domain expertise and more people? Or perhaps they can rely on savings and have been able to bootstrap a little better than high-school/college grads? Anyway, good job on StatWing, I love playing around with numbers and graphs. Perhaps some public datasets will help people get more familiar with the app and serve as demo.

simonw 14y ago
Maybe older founders are more likely to have previous experience with hiring full time or freelance employees, and are hence less likely to doing everything themselves.
jeremyjh 14y ago
It would be interesting to know if the average hours worked per week would also be correlated with # of employees and age. My hypothesis is that older founders will not be as likely to get involved in a startup that would have them doing everything themselves and working the kind of hours thus entailed. They will tend to go for those startups where for whatever reason (early revenue streams ) they can staff up sooner.
- benreyes 14y ago
  Regarding older founders. I'm currently working with one of the founders that is a statistical anomaly on the upper rage of the graph. Reality as I perceive it is far opposite from the case, perhaps this is why they are a statistical anomaly within YC.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  My hypothesis is that older founders will not be as likely to get involved in a startup that would have them doing everything themselves and working the kind of hours thus entailed. I predict that marital / family status would have more to do with it than just raw age (allowing that age may somewhat correlate with being married / having children). That is, a single founder who is 39 is, as far as I can tell, not much different than a 25 year old founder. Being in that position myself, I can at least tell you that the "now or never" effect mentioned below is very motivational for us old farts. I know I work harder on Fogbeam Labs now than I would have when I was 25, and I'd be comfortable saying I work approximately as hard as most 19, 23, 27, 32 or whatever year old founders. Now, if I were married with children at home, I probably would not be willing to put in those hours... in that regard, I kinda agree with your hypotheses.
achompas 14y ago
I wonder why that is? Let's not rush to find an explanation, now! Looking at the data, we see that two outliers (age 30 with 10 employees, age 33 with 12 employees) are driving what is admittedly a "small" correlation. These two companies are about 4 standard deviations away from the mean of 1.4 employees/company. They're arguably outliers, and I suspect they're skewing any effect we might be seeing. Of course, a small, skewed sample (tech companies in YC) obviously means we can't infer a damn thing beyond YC members to begin with, but its worth pointing out those outliers.

simonw 14y ago

Maybe older founders are more likely to have previous experience with hiring full time or freelance employees, and are hence less likely to doing everything themselves.

jeremyjh 14y ago

It would be interesting to know if the average hours worked per week would also be correlated with # of employees and age. My hypothesis is that older founders will not be as likely to get involved in a startup that would have them doing everything themselves and working the kind of hours thus entailed. They will tend to go for those startups where for whatever reason (early revenue streams ) they can staff up sooner.

benreyes 14y ago
Regarding older founders. I'm currently working with one of the founders that is a statistical anomaly on the upper rage of the graph. Reality as I perceive it is far opposite from the case, perhaps this is why they are a statistical anomaly within YC.
mindcrime 14y ago
My hypothesis is that older founders will not be as likely to get involved in a startup that would have them doing everything themselves and working the kind of hours thus entailed. I predict that marital / family status would have more to do with it than just raw age (allowing that age may somewhat correlate with being married / having children). That is, a single founder who is 39 is, as far as I can tell, not much different than a 25 year old founder. Being in that position myself, I can at least tell you that the "now or never" effect mentioned below is very motivational for us old farts. I know I work harder on Fogbeam Labs now than I would have when I was 25, and I'd be comfortable saying I work approximately as hard as most 19, 23, 27, 32 or whatever year old founders. Now, if I were married with children at home, I probably would not be willing to put in those hours... in that regard, I kinda agree with your hypotheses.

achompas 14y ago

I wonder why that is? Let's not rush to find an explanation, now! Looking at the data, we see that two outliers (age 30 with 10 employees, age 33 with 12 employees) are driving what is admittedly a "small" correlation. These two companies are about 4 standard deviations away from the mean of 1.4 employees/company. They're arguably outliers, and I suspect they're skewing any effect we might be seeing. Of course, a small, skewed sample (tech companies in YC) obviously means we can't infer a damn thing beyond YC members to begin with, but its worth pointing out those outliers.