In my last company/startup, when I was more actively involved in the hiring, the best candidate we saw of the 100+ interviewed was 40 yo. He declined the offer

In my last company/startup, when I was more actively involved in the hiring, the best candidate we saw of the 100+ interviewed was 40 yo. He declined the offer because we couldn't pay him enough even though he was _obviously_ worth the money. At my current startup, around the time I joined we were explicitly only looking for senior developers who were generally at the top of their game. As a result we _mostly_ hired people who were at least 28, and often significantly over 30 because that seems to be about the time you hit that point. Needless to say, we hired a lot of people with kids. I personally had my first kid one month after hire, and I was very open about that timing in my interviews. So yeah, it depends on the startup, but it seems to me that any startup that isn't willing to hire "older" developers is discriminating their way out of many of the top candidates.