
Founders of Successful Tech Companies Are Mostly Middle-Aged - gk1
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/29/business/tech-start-up-founders-nest.html
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npalli
Those who want to read the paper

[https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-
ben/htm/A...](https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-
ben/htm/Age%20and%20High%20Growth%20Entrepreneurship.pdf)

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streetcat1
The harder the tech, the older the founder.

~~~
tempsy
There are no rules on this either.

I’m pretty sure the Neuralink president is like 29.

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remotecool
Most 20 somethings are usually used by venture capital firms to prove an idea
and then replaced with more experienced and trusted executives.

There are a few rare exceptions, like Facebook.

~~~
ziddoap
Do you have any citation on this?

Genuinely interested to see if this is a real phenomenon or just anecdotally
what you have witnessed.

~~~
rgbrenner
This is true, but I don't think VCs use young founders to prove an idea. A
startup is a very different environment than an enterprise.. and it's very
rare that a person can execute well at all stages. So eventually the startup
grows to a point where more professional leadership is helpful.. and VCs will
happily replace a founder if they think it'll make them more money.

There's a lot of research on this (and dating back quite a while.. not new at
all). So here are just some quick links I found:

[https://www.kauffman.org/-/media/kauffman_org/research-
repor...](https://www.kauffman.org/-/media/kauffman_org/research-reports-and-
covers/2015/11/ceo_evolution.pdf)

[https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-
abstract/31/4/1532/4604...](https://academic.oup.com/rfs/article-
abstract/31/4/1532/4604800?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

[https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-founding-ceos-dilemma-stay-
or...](https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-founding-ceos-dilemma-stay-or-go)

[https://www.businessinsider.com/how-often-do-founding-
ceos-g...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-often-do-founding-ceos-get-
replaced-2011-8)

Also this is a nice article about this from the Founders Dilemma (which is a
good book also): [https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-
dilemma](https://hbr.org/2008/02/the-founders-dilemma)

~~~
remotecool
Creating a successful startup is proving an idea. That was my point.

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adventured
I update this list from time to time. It overwhelmingly supports the premise
that most of the founders of successful (or otherwise well-known) tech
companies are typically in their 30s or older (and not ~18-22):

Paul Graham (31, Viaweb); Jan Koum (33, WhatsApp); Brian Acton (37, WhatsApp);
Ev Williams (34, Twitter); Jack Dorsey (33, Square); Elon Musk (32, Tesla |
31, SpaceX | 27, PayPal); Garrett Camp (30, Uber); Travis Kalanick (32, Uber);
Brian Chesky (27, Airbnb); Adam Neumann (31, WeWork); Reed Hastings (37,
Netflix); Reid Hoffman (36, LinkedIn); Jack Ma (35, Alibaba); Jeff Bezos (30,
Amazon); Jerry Sanders (33, AMD); Marc Benioff (35, Salesforce); Ross Perot
(32, EDS); Peter Norton (39, Norton); Larry Ellison (33, Oracle); Mitch Kapor
(32, Lotus); Leonard Bosack (32, Cisco); Sandy Lerner (29, Cisco); Gordon
Moore (39, Intel); Mark Cuban (37, Broadcast.com); Scott Cook (31, Intuit);
Nolan Bushnell (29, Atari); Paul Galvin (33, Motorola); Irwin Jacobs (52,
Qualcomm); David Duffield (46, PeopleSoft | 64, Workday); Aneel Bhusri (39,
Workday); Thomas Siebel (41, Siebel Systems); John McAfee (42, McAfee); Gary
Hendrix (32, Symantec); Scott McNealy (28, Sun); Pierre Omidyar (28, eBay);
Rich Barton (29, Expedia | 38, Zillow); Jim Clark (38, SGI | 49, Netscape);
Charles Wang (32, CA); David Packard (27, HP); Craig Newmark (43, Craigslist);
John Warnock (42, Adobe); Robert Noyce (30, Fairchild | 41, Intel); Rod Canion
(37, Compaq); Jen-Hsun Huang (30, nVidia); James Goodnight (33, SAS); John
Sall (28, SAS); Eli Harari (41, SanDisk); Sanjay Mehrotra (28, SanDisk); Al
Shugart (48, Seagate); Finis Conner (34, Seagate); Henry Samueli (37,
Broadcom); Henry Nicholas (32, Broadcom); Charles Brewer (36, Mindspring);
William Shockley (45, Shockley); Ron Rivest (35, RSA); Adi Shamir (30, RSA);
John Walker (32, Autodesk); Halsey Minor (30, CNet); David Filo (28, Yahoo);
Jeremy Stoppelman (27, Yelp); Eric Lefkofsky (39, Groupon); Andrew Mason (29,
Groupon); Markus Persson (30, Mojang); David Hitz (28, NetApp); Brian Lee (28,
Legalzoom); Demis Hassabis (34, DeepMind); Tim Westergren (35, Pandora);
Martin Lorentzon (37, Spotify); Ashar Aziz (44, FireEye); Kevin O'Connor (36,
DoubleClick); Ben Silbermann (28, Pinterest); Evan Sharp (28, Pinterest);
Steve Kirsch (38, Infoseek); Stephen Kaufer (36, TripAdvisor); Michael
McNeilly (28, Applied Materials); Eugene McDermott (52, Texas Instruments);
Richard Egan (43, EMC); Gary Kildall (32, Digital Research); Hasso Plattner
(28, SAP); Robert Glaser (32, Real Networks); Patrick Byrne (37,
Overstock.com); Marc Lore (33, Diapers.com); Ed Iacobucci (36, Citrix
Systems); Ray Noorda (55, Novell); Tom Leighton (42, Akamai); Daniel Lewin
(28, Akamai); Diane Greene (43, VMWare); Mendel Rosenblum (36, VMWare);
Michael Mauldin (35, Lycos); Tom Anderson (33, MySpace); Chris DeWolfe (37,
MySpace); Mark Pincus (41, Zynga); Caterina Fake (34, Flickr); Stewart
Butterfield (31, Flickr | 36, Slack); Kevin Systrom (27, Instagram); Adi
Tatarko (37, Houzz); Brian Armstrong (29, Coinbase); Pradeep Sindhu (43,
Juniper); Peter Thiel (31, PayPal | 37, Palantir); Jay Walker (42,
Priceline.com); Bill Coleman (48, BEA Systems); Evan Goldberg (35, NetSuite);
Fred Luddy (48, ServiceNow); Michael Baum (41, Splunk); Nir Zuk (33, Palo Alto
Networks); David Sacks (36, Yammer); Jack Smith (28, Hotmail); Sabeer Bhatia
(28, Hotmail); Chad Hurley (28, YouTube); Andy Rubin (37, Danger | 41,
Android); Rodney Brooks (36, iRobot); Jeff Hawkins (35, Palm); Tom Gosner (39,
DocuSign); Niklas Zennström (37, Skype); Janus Friis (27, Skype); George Kurtz
(40, CrowdStrike); Trip Hawkins (28, EA); Gabe Newell (33, Valve); David
Bohnett (38, Geocities); Bill Gross (40, GoTo.com/Overture); Subrah Iyar (38,
WebEx); Eric Yuan (41, Zoom); Min Zhu (47, WebEx); Bob Parsons (47, GoDaddy);
Wilfred Corrigan (43, LSI); Joe Parkinson (33, Micron); Aart J. de Geus (32,
Synopsys); Patrick Byrne (37, Overstock); Matthew Prince (34, Cloudflare); Ben
Uretsky (28, DigitalOcean); Tom Preston-Werner (28, GitHub); Louis Borders
(48, Webvan); John Moores (36, BMC Software); Vivek Ranadivé (40, Tibco); 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); Cheng Wei (29, Didi
Chuxing); James Liang (29, Ctrip); Zhang Yiming (29, ByteDance);

~~~
jeremyjh
> It overwhelmingly supports the premise

Well yeah, that's what it is supposed to do but it is hardly a _study_ \- you
don't list any counter examples. Where is Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft?
Those are simply the largest companies I can think of in tech and they all
happen to be counter examples.

~~~
adventured
For every Gates and Zuckerberg there are a large number of counter examples.
It isn't subtle, it's a large gap; there is a dearth of founders in the 18-22
range that have started consequential tech companies. For every Michael Dell I
can add to the young group, I can add several founders over ~28 that started
companies like ServiceNow or Splunk or Zoom.

It's unnecessary to list Microsoft, Facebook or Apple because they're the
hyper rare, very well-known stories the media pushes as clickbait. They're the
reason we're buried in mythology stories about young tech company founders.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin fall in-between, although on the younger side, at
25. They're neither in the category with Gates & Zuckerberg, nor of course in
the heavily populated 28-30x group.

Here's a counter list of prominent names:

Bill Gates (20, Microsoft), Paul Allen (22, Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (20,
Facebook), Dustin Moskovitz (20, Facebook), Steve Jobs (21, Apple), Patrick
Collison (22, Stripe), John Collison (20, Stripe), Michael Dell (19, Dell),
Marc Ewing (23/24 Red Hat), Ted Waitt (22, Gateway), Evan Spiegel (21,
Snapchat), Bobby Murphy (23, Snapchat), Marc Andreessen (23, Netscape), Aaron
Levie (20, Box), David Karp (21, Tumblr), Palmer Luckey (20, Oculus), John
Carmack (21, id Software), Helen Greiner (23, iRobot), Sky Dayton (23,
Earthlink), Sean Parker (20, Napster), Shawn Fanning (19, Napster)

Some in the mid 20s mixed group (which includes the Google founders): Drew
Houston (24, Dropbox), Tobias Lütke (24, Shopify), Doug Burgum (25, Great
Plains Software), Tony Hsieh (26, Zappos), Sachin Bansal (26, Flipkart), Steve
Wozniak (25, Apple), Jerry Yang (26/27, Yahoo!)

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gricardo99
But how many also had extensive experience in startups in their 20s and 30s?

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dimitar
Working paper version of the one in the article:

[https://www.nber.org/papers/w24489.pdf](https://www.nber.org/papers/w24489.pdf)

Interesting tidnit from the discussion section:

V.D Venture Capitalist Behavior We also see that venture capitalists tend to
bet on relatively young founders. Given that younger founders have
substantially lower batting averages (see Figure 3), the founder age tendency
in VC investments may be surprising. VCs may thus be seen as making bad bets,
which may be consistent with empirical findings elsewhere suggesting that VCs
have earned low returns (Kaplan and Lerner 2010). However, it may also be the
case that young founders are more in need of early-stage external finance,
thus leading to this relationship. More subtly, and noting that VCs are
seeking high returns, which is not identical to high growth, it may be that
younger founders tend to sell their equity at lower prices, and thus VCs are
making optimal return decisions. Teasing apart why VCs bet young is an
interesting area for further work. We can say now however that venture
capital, a major source of early-stage financing that can help drive creative
destruction and economy-wide growth, does not currently appear allocated to
the firms with the highest growth potential.

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fcaruana
Thank god

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devoply
Zuck is also middle aged. :P

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paggle
This is true for “successful tech companies” but not for “mega successful tech
companies” (e.g. Top 10 of all time, like Apple Google Microsoft Facebook
Amazon Netflix etc.) There you will find the median age closer to 20 than 30.

~~~
jacques_chester
John D. Rockefeller was 31 when he founded Standard Oil.

Andrew Carnegie was 57 when he founded Carnegie steel.

~~~
P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul
My understanding is that JDR started his business at 20, got into oil at 24,
bought out his partners, started a new partnership, and then ended that
partnership at 31, naming the part of the business he got Standard Oil.

~~~
jacques_chester
He did, which kinda underscores the argument that entrepreneurs with prior
experience and connections have a higher chance of success.

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forkLding
From running my own apps and toy startups in college, I don't think its really
the age, its rather the ability of the person to do many things from the tech
side to the business side from like creating the tech/app to going out and
marketing it so you can actually carry the app to success at an early stage,
the experience the person actually has with developing and
marketing/distributing a product so you can carry the app at a growth stage,
the connections the person has to raise money and find cofounders/employees
and the financial capital of the person so you can scale a product to and past
product-market fit. These things can come with age but a young person with all
the above can run a successful business if they have these things.

On the other hand, you can be middle-aged or 50+ and not have any of these
things and run a quite awful startup that turnovers like ~20% of your
employees each month which my friend works at and can attest to, as they have
a rather middle-aged senior management and ceo + cto at their 50-person
startup with executives who have been in the tech and real estate industry at
companies like Expedia for 7+ years and it is not successful despite raising
huge amounts of cash and their company product has never been launched in the
2+ years or any user testing in the period their company has existed and still
offer free dinners and monthly bonuses with the enormous cashpile they raised
and keep raising.

This is also why I think people like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs/Steve
Wozniak or Bill Gates or Spiegel/Murphy or the Collison brothers, etc. has,
which is the ability and experience or at least talent of pretty much any
middle-aged startup founder. There are just some people that outshine others
even at a young age.

