Ask HN: Success stories of older folks

[yen223]

The tech world is saturated with stories about 20-year-old kids founding million dollar companies. Are there any interesting stories in Silicon Valley about older folks who achieved success well past their prime?

(Note: I deliberately chose not to define how old 'old' is. I'm curious to see what folks here think.)

[mindcrime]

I don't know, but as a 40 year old entrepreneur myself, I feel like us "older" folks are more than competitive. I mean, I know I can do things now I couldn't have done at 20 or 25, just due to the difference in overall experience, domain knowledge, context, etc.

That's not to say that I specifically will wind up being a "success story", I'm just saying that I believe pretty strongly - in general - that older entrepreneurs can succeed. In fact, I'd say being older has a lot of advantages in general. The biggest downside for a lot of the older set seems to be this idea of "I have a wife, house, kids, etc., so I am now more risk averse or have less flexibility" or whatever. And there's possibly something to that, but since I have no house, kids or wife, I can't really relate.

[contingencies]

Three of us who began Payward/Kraken were all in the very late 20s - early 30s range a few years ago. Last round and the market say we're doing very well. A younger me previously started something in China which could certainly also been at this level if I didn't want to break up my youth around the planet a little more, but I have no regrets having done so. At 32 expecting my first child maybe the part of me that feels successful mostly feels that not in a monetary sense but a combination of stability/peace of mind, interesting work, and finally proving to myself and others that an unconventional path in life, believing in yourself, is feasible and rewarding. Definitely we learn different things as we mature... soft skills in particular... and there's value there that investors see.

[jesusmichael]

Most people achieve success well past 30, actually entrepreneurs over the age of 55 are more likely to be successful than those under 55.

The reason why there are stories about successful 20 year olds is because its so rare.

The average of millionaires is 63 and billionaires is 60.

[adventured]

Of course there are tons of entrepreneurs that have achieved success at ages well beyond 20, but your premise is wrong.

If they've achieved success, who is to say they're past their prime? Prime in what regard? How would you even begin to define "well past their prime"? Your premise contains an immense contradiction: if they've achieved success, they're probably not well past their prime.

Wisdom is far more important than sheer mental speed and uptake, and the proof of that is in the fact that the 20 year old Silicon Valley zillionaire is mostly a myth.

Most famous, successful tech entrepreneurs were closer to 30 or 35 when they got started or hit their stride, than 20.

Based on a lot of historical examples, prime for a tech entrepreneur, is more likely between 10 and 20 years past the age of 20. Stop buying into the bullshit hype about 20 year old entrepreneurs, it's mostly a fraud.

Here's a simple example list (not all from SV, because that's entirely irrelevant):

Paul Graham (31, Viaweb), Jan Koum (33, WhatsApp), Brian Acton (37, WhatsApp), Ev Williams (34, Twitter), Jack Dorsey (33, Square), Elon Musk (32, Tesla), Garrett Camp (30, Uber), Travis Kalanick (32, Uber), Reed Hastings (37), Eric Lefkofsky (39, Groupon), Andrew Mason (29), Reid Hoffman (36, LinkedIn), Jack Ma (35, Alibaba), Jeff Bezos (30), Jerry Sanders (33), Marc Benioff (35), Peter Norton (39), Larry Ellison (33), Mitch Kapor (32), Leonard Bosack (32), Sandy Lerner (29), Gordon Moore (39), Mark Cuban (37), Scott Cook (31), Nolan Bushnell (29), Irwin Jacobs (52), David Duffield (46, PeopleSoft), Thomas Siebel (41, Siebel Systems), John McAfee (42), Gary Hendrix (32, Symantec), Scott McNealy (28), Pierre Omidyar (28), Jim Clark (38 for SGI, and 49 for Netscape), Charles Wang (32, CA), David Packard (27), John Warnock (42, Adobe), Robert Noyce (30 at Fairchild, 41 for Intel), Rod Canion (37, Compaq), Jen-Hsun Huang (30, nVidia), Charles Brewer (36, Mindspring), William Shockley (45), John Walker (32, Autodesk), Halsey Minor (30, CNet), Ashar Aziz (44, FireEye), Kevin O'Connor (36, DoubleClick), Steve Kirsch (38, Infoseek), Michael McNeilly (28, Applied Materials), Richard Egan (43, EMC), Hasso Plattner (28, SAP), Pradeep Sindhu (43, Juniper), Peter Thiel (37, Palantir), Jay Walker (42, priceline.com), Pony Ma (27, Tencent), Robin Li (32, Baidu), Liu Qiangdong (29, JD.com), Lei Jun (40, Xiaomi), Ren Zhengfei (38, Huawei), Arkady Volozh (36, Yandex), Hiroshi Mikitani (34, Rakuten), Morris Chang (56, Taiwan Semi)

And of course Steve Jobs, who I'd say was still in his prime during the last decade of his life, when he was in his 50's (he clearly did his best work at Apple during the iPod / iPhone years). He was 31 when he bought The Graphics Group, and he basically created an entirely new company that became Pixar.

It's not a coincidence it holds true from Silicon Valley all the way to China. You can see from the list above, the super successful 20 year old founder myth could hardly be further from reality, it is the extreme exception. It's a shame more young entrepreneurs don't know this.

[JSeymourATL]

What about Post-Founder success?

Many successful Founders, aged-out and moved up the food-chain becoming rather successful investors-- among those, notably Paul Graham.