7 ms·

How Old Are Silicon Valley’s Top Founders? Here’s the Data

79 points by arnauddri 13y ago

michaelochurch 13y ago
And here are the reasons for that: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the-isms-of-venture-funded-technology/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-th... Text search for 'chickenhawking' to get to the meat of it.
malanj 13y ago
Seeing that data overlaid with number of people starting companies would be really valuable. I suspect that the average "cost" of starting a company in your 20s is much lower than later in life (smaller salary to give up, less chance of family etc). The really interesting (relevant?) question would be chance of success over age.
- icefox 13y ago
  Then of course you would want to see what is the percentage of startups that failed at any specific age. Maybe it is cheap to start a startup when you are 20, but you fail more than when you are older and know what in the world you are doing.
  - sillysaurus3 13y ago
    That's certainly something people would like to believe, but it'd be interesting to see whether the data backs that up.
  - n3on 13y ago
    I don't think you know more when you are older. Knowledge comes with experience and if you never found a startup in your life, you won't have much more experience no matter what age. You become only more risk averse.
    - icefox 13y ago
      I was part of a startup when I was 20 and I knew nothing. I didn't understand business, I didn't understand money, I didn't understand value, and I barely knew how to develop software in a competent manor. When I was 20 it was still okay to sleep on a couch for months because I saved $80, I could barely comprehend how insignificant $80 is to a company. I was making something cool that I wanted and the fact that the company wanted it too was neat and frankly lucky. Given another ten years of just living your knowledge of how the world works will grow considerably. Maybe you do become a little more risk averse, but you definitely become a lot less stupid. When you are 20 you have a very hard time judging how good an idea is so one is as good as another. Given enough 20 year olds one is bound to be lucky :) When you are 30 you should be able to toss out many ideas most of which are just bad which is why I would expect them to fail less.
cwal37 13y ago
When they complain about having to get the data by hand, I assumed they were crawling through at least hundreds of profiles. Instead, it's just 35. If I had to guess, that's also a contributing reason as to why the first bar chart is in %, it masks how laughably small their sample is. Just because those founders have companies that went on to $1billion+ doesn't make them disproportionately significant in a statistical sense. Although it feels like they try to imply that with "disproportionately influential dataset".
arnauddri 13y ago
Data show surprisingly young founders in the billion dollars clubs but I'd be interested to see the breakdown of tech/business founders among the 20-24 yo founders
- rhizome 13y ago
  or in the 5MM club
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  You mean the extremely bubbly my series A-F silicon valley VC valuation billion dollar club. Also known as the $100 million of which I own 5% as a founder reality club.
theflubba 13y ago
Stolen from my buddy Abe. Poor journalism. http://abe.is/the-best-age-to-raise-money/ http://abe.is/the-best-age-to-raise-money/
- dang 13y ago
  I'm sorry I missed this; I would have changed the URL. We're working on a way for users to notify us when there's a more appropriate URL.
- bjelkeman-again 13y ago
  It looks very much like it. A shame if they did and didn't credit him.
- diminoten 13y ago
  That article is way more interesting, to boot.
- mahmud 13y ago
  Typical data journalism. Find someone with better data and a better article, and appropriate it.
- bakhy 13y ago
  from a quick glance at the linked GitHub repo, seems like your buddy seems to have much more data!
johnrob 13y ago
There are probably very few founders over 50. Given that there is at least one success in that bracket, I'll bet that founders over 50 have the best odds of any age group.
- w1ntermute 13y ago
  Not least because any entrepreneurs of that age are probably successful serial entrepreneurs. Otherwise, they wouldn't even be able to get any funding at that age.
  - jebblue 13y ago
    After 50 we should just go fishing for the next 20 or 30 years until we croak. The world doesn't need us any more.
  - krschultz 13y ago
    I actually know several people that have gotten funding after age 50. Just one example, but the first startup I worked at had a CEO who was around 50 years old, and it was the best place I've ever worked.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  You may have missed this: A 2008 paper looked at a random sample of more moderately successful founders (sales in excess of $1 million and 20+ employees) and found an average and median age at founding of 39, with only 31% under 35. According to the paper's abstract[1]: Twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their fifties as do those in their early twenties, as this paper will show. Given that this study covered more than 500 companies filtered by more reasonable criteria, I'd say it probably provides a more realistic perspective. It's also worth noting that it appears to be in line with the age data from a study conducted by the Kauffman Foundation[2] that took a broader look at entrepreneurial activity. [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1127248&download=yes http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1127248&d... [2] http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2013/04/kiea_2013_report.pdf http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20repo...
hglaser 13y ago
Selecting companies that are valued at over $1B yet haven't IPO'd yet is a really narrow set and a moving target. Why not include companies that were venture-backed and have IPO'd? And/or companies that were acquired for over $1B? For me the most interesting part of the underlying data is the number of Chinese companies.
LukeWalsh 13y ago
I really hate when people default to percentages to display data for incredibly small sample sizes. I know by the very nature of the data there is not that much individual information available but the sample size is 41 companies. Really?
pdevr 13y ago
This is a decent start. However, the data set is statistically insignificant. Only 52 founders? HBR can do much better than this.
- ganeumann 13y ago
  Agree. I read the part where they "were limited by having to do manual research" on LinkedIn: essentially typing in the founders' names and hitting return. They did this 52 times. Get some grad students and put them to work. You'll have a couple thousand in no time. I once emailed Reid Hoffman (a friend knows him) proposing to do an analysis of the life-cycle of an entrepreneur (age, what jobs they held before founding, repeat founder success, etc.) I never heard back from him; I'm sure he's got better things to do. But I wish LinkedIn would set up a data-mining department, like OKCupid's. They could do some really interesting stuff.
  - rubyrescue 13y ago
    LI has a very large data mining department, they just don't publish what they are doing. Just look on LI for employees of LinkedIn that are data scientists; it's a substantial team. Source: I'm trying to hire data scientists and I am learning where they are...
- jsanroman 13y ago
  I thought statistical significance started at 30 data points
pbreit 13y ago
Did they make the source data available? It's only about 40 companies, right? Should be pretty easy to show us the details.
error54 13y ago
>"...manually searching LinkedIn profiles for year graduated, we were able to generate a list of founders for 35 of the 41 start-ups, and to determine an approximate age for the majority of them." I think there's a statistically significant variance in a graduation date versus a persons actual age. Lot's of people in my CS program were above the age of 25 but if all you're checking is the graduation year then according to this graph, we would all be put into the 20-24 bucket. Granted, they acknowledge that their data is heavily biased given their small sample size and given the fact that it only charts successful startups.
fragsworth 13y ago
This data is worthless because it shows nothing about the distribution of founder success. It gives no indication of expected value. Better data would provide the average success of funded companies by the age of the founders. This would tell us whether or not younger or older founders are being under-funded. The expected value of older founders could easily be higher if they have a lower variance but greater average success. Or it could be that younger founders are severely under-funded because the top-heaviness of the winners vastly outweighs the higher number of failures. Who knows? The data in the article tells us nothing but how old people happen to be in this community.
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  It's probably not worthless. It just depends what question you're interested in answering. Expected value is a good one, but personally I was just interested in knowing the ages of all the founders. It's absolutely worthless for an investor who's trying to predict success, though. And since founders are investors of their own time, it's worthless to help you decide whether you should start a company.

79 points by arnauddri 13y ago

And here are the reasons for that: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the-isms-of-venture-funded-technology/ http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-th... Text search for 'chickenhawking' to get to the meat of it.

malanj 13y ago

Seeing that data overlaid with number of people starting companies would be really valuable. I suspect that the average "cost" of starting a company in your 20s is much lower than later in life (smaller salary to give up, less chance of family etc). The really interesting (relevant?) question would be chance of success over age.

icefox 13y ago
Then of course you would want to see what is the percentage of startups that failed at any specific age. Maybe it is cheap to start a startup when you are 20, but you fail more than when you are older and know what in the world you are doing.
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  That's certainly something people would like to believe, but it'd be interesting to see whether the data backs that up.
- n3on 13y ago
  I don't think you know more when you are older. Knowledge comes with experience and if you never found a startup in your life, you won't have much more experience no matter what age. You become only more risk averse.
  - icefox 13y ago
    I was part of a startup when I was 20 and I knew nothing. I didn't understand business, I didn't understand money, I didn't understand value, and I barely knew how to develop software in a competent manor. When I was 20 it was still okay to sleep on a couch for months because I saved $80, I could barely comprehend how insignificant $80 is to a company. I was making something cool that I wanted and the fact that the company wanted it too was neat and frankly lucky. Given another ten years of just living your knowledge of how the world works will grow considerably. Maybe you do become a little more risk averse, but you definitely become a lot less stupid. When you are 20 you have a very hard time judging how good an idea is so one is as good as another. Given enough 20 year olds one is bound to be lucky :) When you are 30 you should be able to toss out many ideas most of which are just bad which is why I would expect them to fail less.

cwal37 13y ago

When they complain about having to get the data by hand, I assumed they were crawling through at least hundreds of profiles. Instead, it's just 35. If I had to guess, that's also a contributing reason as to why the first bar chart is in %, it masks how laughably small their sample is. Just because those founders have companies that went on to $1billion+ doesn't make them disproportionately significant in a statistical sense. Although it feels like they try to imply that with "disproportionately influential dataset".

arnauddri 13y ago

Data show surprisingly young founders in the billion dollars clubs but I'd be interested to see the breakdown of tech/business founders among the 20-24 yo founders

rhizome 13y ago
or in the 5MM club
pyrrhotech 13y ago
You mean the extremely bubbly my series A-F silicon valley VC valuation billion dollar club. Also known as the $100 million of which I own 5% as a founder reality club.

theflubba 13y ago

Stolen from my buddy Abe. Poor journalism. http://abe.is/the-best-age-to-raise-money/ http://abe.is/the-best-age-to-raise-money/

dang 13y ago
I'm sorry I missed this; I would have changed the URL. We're working on a way for users to notify us when there's a more appropriate URL.
bjelkeman-again 13y ago
It looks very much like it. A shame if they did and didn't credit him.
diminoten 13y ago
That article is way more interesting, to boot.
mahmud 13y ago
Typical data journalism. Find someone with better data and a better article, and appropriate it.
bakhy 13y ago
from a quick glance at the linked GitHub repo, seems like your buddy seems to have much more data!

johnrob 13y ago

There are probably very few founders over 50. Given that there is at least one success in that bracket, I'll bet that founders over 50 have the best odds of any age group.

w1ntermute 13y ago
Not least because any entrepreneurs of that age are probably successful serial entrepreneurs. Otherwise, they wouldn't even be able to get any funding at that age.
- jebblue 13y ago
  After 50 we should just go fishing for the next 20 or 30 years until we croak. The world doesn't need us any more.
- krschultz 13y ago
  I actually know several people that have gotten funding after age 50. Just one example, but the first startup I worked at had a CEO who was around 50 years old, and it was the best place I've ever worked.
7Figures2Commas 13y ago
You may have missed this: A 2008 paper looked at a random sample of more moderately successful founders (sales in excess of $1 million and 20+ employees) and found an average and median age at founding of 39, with only 31% under 35. According to the paper's abstract[1]: Twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their fifties as do those in their early twenties, as this paper will show. Given that this study covered more than 500 companies filtered by more reasonable criteria, I'd say it probably provides a more realistic perspective. It's also worth noting that it appears to be in line with the age data from a study conducted by the Kauffman Foundation[2] that took a broader look at entrepreneurial activity. [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1127248&download=yes http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1127248&d... [2] http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20reports%20and%20covers/2013/04/kiea_2013_report.pdf http://www.kauffman.org/~/media/kauffman_org/research%20repo...

hglaser 13y ago

Selecting companies that are valued at over $1B yet haven't IPO'd yet is a really narrow set and a moving target. Why not include companies that were venture-backed and have IPO'd? And/or companies that were acquired for over $1B? For me the most interesting part of the underlying data is the number of Chinese companies.

LukeWalsh 13y ago

I really hate when people default to percentages to display data for incredibly small sample sizes. I know by the very nature of the data there is not that much individual information available but the sample size is 41 companies. Really?

pdevr 13y ago

This is a decent start. However, the data set is statistically insignificant. Only 52 founders? HBR can do much better than this.

ganeumann 13y ago
Agree. I read the part where they "were limited by having to do manual research" on LinkedIn: essentially typing in the founders' names and hitting return. They did this 52 times. Get some grad students and put them to work. You'll have a couple thousand in no time. I once emailed Reid Hoffman (a friend knows him) proposing to do an analysis of the life-cycle of an entrepreneur (age, what jobs they held before founding, repeat founder success, etc.) I never heard back from him; I'm sure he's got better things to do. But I wish LinkedIn would set up a data-mining department, like OKCupid's. They could do some really interesting stuff.
- rubyrescue 13y ago
  LI has a very large data mining department, they just don't publish what they are doing. Just look on LI for employees of LinkedIn that are data scientists; it's a substantial team. Source: I'm trying to hire data scientists and I am learning where they are...
jsanroman 13y ago
I thought statistical significance started at 30 data points

pbreit 13y ago

Did they make the source data available? It's only about 40 companies, right? Should be pretty easy to show us the details.

error54 13y ago

>"...manually searching LinkedIn profiles for year graduated, we were able to generate a list of founders for 35 of the 41 start-ups, and to determine an approximate age for the majority of them." I think there's a statistically significant variance in a graduation date versus a persons actual age. Lot's of people in my CS program were above the age of 25 but if all you're checking is the graduation year then according to this graph, we would all be put into the 20-24 bucket. Granted, they acknowledge that their data is heavily biased given their small sample size and given the fact that it only charts successful startups.

fragsworth 13y ago

This data is worthless because it shows nothing about the distribution of founder success. It gives no indication of expected value. Better data would provide the average success of funded companies by the age of the founders. This would tell us whether or not younger or older founders are being under-funded. The expected value of older founders could easily be higher if they have a lower variance but greater average success. Or it could be that younger founders are severely under-funded because the top-heaviness of the winners vastly outweighs the higher number of failures. Who knows? The data in the article tells us nothing but how old people happen to be in this community.

sillysaurus3 13y ago
It's probably not worthless. It just depends what question you're interested in answering. Expected value is a good one, but personally I was just interested in knowing the ages of all the founders. It's absolutely worthless for an investor who's trying to predict success, though. And since founders are investors of their own time, it's worthless to help you decide whether you should start a company.