
The next big thing (Dave's timeline of entrepreneurs) - bootload
http://www.scripting.com/stories/2007/06/17/theNextBigThing.html
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startupper
Aruba, Starent, Infinera are hot 2007 IPO's of note that were recently in the
news. None of them were started by 20-somethings.

I think this site and the referenced bloggers have a software-centric focus.
There may well be a significant number of successful 20-somethings in software
businesses. But software is a subset of technology and one cannot apply the
observations here to technology in general.

Consider this: the global market for communications equipment exceeds 1
trillion dollars -- there's a lot of opportunity there for domain specific
expertise that often times requires an advanced degree and experience in the
industry. Companies such as Qualcomm and Broadcom are other examples where the
founders were well-established in their careers, i.e. not 20-something.

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acgourley
To see eye to eye in this community you need to s/startup/webstartup/.

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weel
But it will be interesting to see if some of the business practices (very low
initial budgets, early releases, &c;) common in web startups might translate
into other fields. At least one YC startup (sproutsys) appears to be doing
pretty serious systems software, which is still software, but quite different
from being a "web startup".

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corentin
From what I can read on their recruitment page
(<http://sproutsys.com/careers.html),> SproutSys seems to plan cool stuff!

Regarding web startups: well, a few of them are quite innovative but most of
them are indeed uninteresting copies of copies of copies... It's boring.

So, who is working on something else than web stuff here? Any hardware
startups?

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startupper
There was a discussion on this earlier.

We are working on a wireless hw/sw/fw startup. Of late I've had at least one
Web2.0 person express an interest in working for us. I expect we'll find many
others who find the web startup scene boring.

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corentin
Exact, the thread is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21107>

"Of late I've had at least one Web2.0 person express an interest in working
for us."

Well, you have a second interested person now! But I'm not a web 2.0 person;
I'm an embedded software developer (and I, too, find this whole web hype very
boring). Where can I find more info? Your profile is empty :(

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pg
Winer is wrong to say that Steve Jobs disproves Fred Wilson's hypothesis. No
one doubts 50 year olds are good at running big companies. Fred was talking
about who's good at starting new ones.

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koolmoe
Winer is not using the example of Jobs to refute the idea that younger people
are good at startups. In fact, he acknowledges that younger people often have
the willingness to accept risk and enthusiasm that their older counterparts
may not have.

He's trying to refute Wilson's idea that younger people are developing the
design patterns of the web while older people are used to reading the
newspaper, watching TV and generally out of touch with what's going on with
technology. Steve Jobs seems to be a pretty good example of a person whose
ideas about technology have improved with age.

In any case, the idea that the _average_ twentysomething is more plugged in
than the _average_ fortysomething may be valid, but it should be obvious that
the situation changes when you are comparing individuals who are interested in
and devoted to technology development.

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Psyonic
I'm not sure I agree with you that Steve Jobs ideas about technology have
improved with age. His ideas 20 years ago were just as groundbreaking (for the
time) as his current ones.

