
Ask PG: YC Founders over 30 yrs old - dannyr
I'm curious to know how many YC companies with founders over 30 yrs old have been funded.<p>We hear so much about founders right out of college. I also wonder how much of a factor is age in selecting companies.
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pg
There are quite a lot of founders over 30. I don't know exactly how many
because we don't keep track of ages. The sharp falloff is around 35, but we've
had a handful of founders over 40. None over 50 though.

I think our age distribution is probably close to the age distribution for
startups generally. We've funded more founders who are 27 than 20 or 35
because more people start startups at 27 than at 20 or 35.

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sanj
I seem to recall at the YC meetup in Cambridge last summer
(<http://anyvite.com/events/home/tmokjxuwai/>) that there was a question
asking why the application asked for age.

I recall that you said "... age is a high bit in characterizing someone."

And Jessica yelled from the cheap seats that "... we need it to know that you
can sign stuff legally."

I remember it vividly because it confirmed my decision not to apply to YC.

~~~
pg
It sounds like you were reading a lot into what we said. Jessica's remark was
obviously a joke. And all I meant was that when you're trying to judge
someone's achievements, you need to know how long they've had to achieve them.
Would you hold a 20 year old to the same standard as a 30 year old?

~~~
SamAtt
I'd think there would be more of a drop off with opportunities like Y
Combinator than there would be with other Angel investors. I'm surprised there
are any at all.

I guess it's still an excellent opportunity to meet people so I mean no
offense to those over 30 who did sign up but I'm a 25 year old and I wouldn't
pick up and move for $5,000 bucks. I always thought part of the lure of Y
Combinator was that young folks had nothing to tie them down. I can't think of
a 30 year old I know who has no obligations.

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SwellJoe
"I mean no offense to those over 30 who did sign up but I'm a 25 year old and
I wouldn't pick up and move for $5,000 bucks"

No offense taken (I was 32 when we accepted YC funding). But it wasn't for
$5000. Nobody, at any age, (except for rdouble) is applying to YC for $5000.
The reason to move is because you probably should be in the valley, if you're
starting a technology startup that is going to need to raise money or build
partnerships with existing tech companies.

Anyway, the money was not at all a motivating factor for us in applying for
YC. If we could hire pg, tlb, rtm, and Jessica to work for us for some amount
of money, I would happily give them money. But that's not the way they wanted
to play it, so we took some money from them instead. You're entirely missing
the point of YC, if you think the money is the primary motivation for anyone
working with YC.

Edit: Parenthetical added to cover outlier.

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rdouble
_Nobody, at any age, is applying to YC for $5000._

Actually, money was a large part of the reason I applied to YC. I had a huge
medical bill while uninsured last year and it wiped out a large chunk of my
cash.

~~~
SwellJoe
Fixed.

~~~
rdouble
Heh. Cool. By the way, if you need an iPhone app for Virtualmin, my contact
info is in my profile. We got an interview but we didn't get the $5000. :)

~~~
SwellJoe
You know the email address field doesn't appear in your profile, right? And
your websites don't provide contact info.

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iamelgringo
_A common belief is that U.S.-born tech founders of technology companies tend
to be young. We found that about 1 percent were teenagers when they started
their firms. More than twice as many were older than age fifty than were
younger than twenty-five. Many, in fact, were in their sixties when they
founded their startups. The vast majority of U.S.-born tech founders were
older than twenty-five. The average and median age of key tech founders was
thirty-nine._

Source: <http://sites.kauffman.org/pdf/Education_Tech_Ent_061108.pdf>

~~~
electric
This is very relevant research. I actually agree with the findings based on
the people I know who have started technology companies.

I don't think it applies to the kind of people that YC is targeting - young,
mobile, no dependents, able to live on very little $'s a year or the
technology segment which is consumer web startups.

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tptacek
The demographics here are kind of straightforward.

If you're over 30, you're more likely to have a family.

If you have a family and you can handle starting a company from zero, you're
less likely to need YC. If you can't handle starting from zero, YC doesn't
help you anyways.

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benatkin
This article has some good insight into people who succeed later in life (late
bloomers): <http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_10_20_a_latebloomers.html>

It does happen, and it's not as rare as most people think. The article also
makes a pretty strong argument that late bloomers tend to approach things
differently than those who get an early start.

~~~
jfischer
Thanks -- I really enjoyed that article. I could relate to the line "I felt
like I'd stepped off a cliff and I didn't know if the parachute was going to
open. Nobody wants to waste their life..." The discussion about the importance
of a support network for "experimental innovators" is spot-on, too.

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dbul
It isn't surprising most founders are in their twenties given demographics
which are probably close to this on HN:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039>

It looks like those in their thirties are well-represented. I don't see why
age would make a difference anyway. If you blow them away, my guess is you're
in. Just spend a few hours on your application, get a few people who you think
are smarter than you to review your application with you for a few hours,
submit it, then go back to focusing on your startup.

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dedalus
I work for a startup where everyone in the company is over 30

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newsio
This thread (and the link to the Gladwell essay that someone submitted to it
earlier) are interesting. I'm 39 years old, and want to start my own company
and change my career from journalist to news technologist/entrepreneur. Some
readers might chuckle at that, but I am very serious.

In my mind, the question of the age of YC founders has much to do with the
threshold for risk. Age definitely plays a part. But age does not crush
vision, and brings some benefits in terms of experience and understanding of
target markets. In my own case, I have an idea for a mobile news platform that
I believe will change the way in which a lot of people get information. I
think it would be a product that people want, but the only way to find out is
to build it and see what the market thinks.

But I recognize that there are a lot of barriers to achieving my vision.

First, I'm not a hacker, and I don't have a co-founder (yet) who is. I think
in pg's view, this would preclude me from starting this type of company (based
on some of his commentary in Founders At Work and in
<http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html>). Nevertheless, I have a lot of
experience with the technologies that would drive the platform, and insights
into the way people consume information, and I think this will be extremely
valuable in driving product development.

Second, I have a family and a mortgage. Others have noted family-related
issues, but the situation really depends on the specifics of your family. My
wife is not working, as my youngest is in preschool only for three mornings a
week. This makes it impossible for me to take the risk right now to drop my
day job and the health insurance that comes with it (I live in the U.S., in
the Boston area) and work full time on my product. If my wife was working in a
professional position, not only would we have the salary and insurance to fall
back on if I stopped working at my day job, but also we could afford day care.

So, what I am doing right now is plugging away at the business plan and some
of the technical concepts in my spare time, usually for two hours per day
after the kids go to sleep. I'm trying to bone up on my understanding of the
platforms that I think I will need to grok in order to get this thing off the
ground. I've stopped putting money in my 401k to build up some funds, and I'm
considering how I might tap other sources of funding -- not to mention
considering various revenue streams from the product itself.

Would I ever apply to Y Combinator? I couldn't do it on my own, but I might,
if I had the right team and could consider taking off for a few months (I wish
YC still had the summer program in Cambridge!). The family-related concerns
are real, but there are ways to address them (for instance, COBRA for health
insurance and enough funding to cover my mortgage and living expenses).

Edited: Changed first sentence to add Gladwell ref

~~~
devin
Thanks for that newsio. As a 24-year-old I can't relate to a lot of the
challenges you're facing, but I draw a healthy amount of inspiration from your
passion and drive. I wish you the best of luck.

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smakz
Regardless of whether you go the YC path or not - you should know that there
are many, many examples of extremely successful companies being founded by
people in their 30's and later. Cisco, Qualcomm, Amazon.com, Bose Corporation,
LinkedIn. etc.etc.etc.

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Retric
Normaly there are a lot of rule about age discrimination, but I don't think
they exist in terms of investment $. I wonder if there are any such pitfalls
when building an incubator?

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dannyr
I'm a little surprised that there are a lot of 30+ founders.

The thing is we mostly read about young people getting into YC.

I have also been to a number of gatherings with the YC founders and most of
them are young.

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Mistone
rescuetime is one example right off hand, also not sure how old Matt Moroon at
draftMix is but def does not strike me as fresh out of college. sure there is
a few more as well.

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icey
Someone posted a correction and I guess they've deleted it; but Matt's last
name is "Maroon", not "Moroon".

~~~
mattmaroon
And he's under 30 still. Was 26 when he went out to YC. Spread the word.

~~~
Mistone
matt, sorry for the misspell, annoying im sure. a young guy indeed.

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TriinT
If you look at many tech startups, you will notice that the age of the
founders is closely related to the nature of their business. For instance, YC
startups do mostly web software, so the founders should be young because the
barriers of entry aren't that high. After all, a smart kid who spends his
teens coding in his spare time will be at his best by the age of 20.

On the other hand, I know startups which were founded by guys in their 30s and
40s. Their business areas were chip-design and laser tech for optical
networks. The barrier of entry in these fields is huge.

To cut a long story short, if you're 35 you may be old by web-app industry
standards, but you're still young by semiconductor industry standards. Since
you're on HN I suppose you're into software, not hardware, so what I have just
written will most likely be irrelevant to you.

