Maybe young founders are preferred because they are cheap and they fail fast. They don't have the proverbial family to feed, and they don't have enough life exp

Maybe young founders are preferred because they are cheap and they fail fast. They don't have the proverbial family to feed, and they don't have enough life experience to worry about going head first in a direction that may contain a blind corner. If you want even more cynicism, it is also possible that less scrupulous VCs find younger founders easier to manipulate, over promise, over work, and under deliver. All this. You're absolutely right, and you're not being cynical or mean or harsh. You're citing what are essentially sociological facts about Silicon Valley. If you want to go hard cynical, read this: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-the-isms-of-venture-funded-technology/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/12/14/vc-istan-6-t... The short version is that this funding of a certain type of young person (frat-boy psychopaths) is actually an expression of a midlife crisis. Instead of doing the midlife crisis honestly and buying a Ferrari or pursuing a new religion, they pick up young sociopaths as proteges, taking care of their careers in order to live vicariously through younger men who, given the cash, could do some real damage to the world (and toss back a story about his escapades in exchange for continued funding). The term for this is chickenhawking, because both common meanings apply.