
Age and High-Growth Entrepreneurship - dalek2point3
http://www.nber.org/papers/w24489
======
jknoepfler
I honestly can't understand why this would shock anyone with experience in
engineering. As a senior developer, I'm vastly more able to realize ideas than
I was even three years ago. I also know vastly more. I'm able to understand
cutting-edge systems and language research that I couldn't before. I'm able to
design systems quickly and more reliably. I'm able to separate good ideas from
bad ideas more reliably. I'm better with people and managing my own ego, and
therefore able to navigate interpersonal situations more reliably.

I'm also financially stable and have deep savings, so I'm able to take time
off to pursue ideas more reliably.

After a few more years, particularly as I gain leadership experience, I expect
to be even more effective.

There's literally no down-side to getting older in terms of my ability to
bootstrap a successful company.

~~~
sleet
I agree but there's probably a limit on that sentiment.

If you start a family you are likely to become more risk adverse, this would
increase again as you approach retirement.

~~~
codazoda
True, but ~45 may be a golden age again. By then your kids may be starting to
becoming self sufficient, retirement is still 20 years off, and you've lived
through a fair number of financial problems. Your retirement plans might be
coming together and the world is starting to look more rosey. Plus, you find
yourself feeling like you're nearing the end of your "youth"; you're aged but
you still feel good. Perhaps you become less worried about the risk and you're
well trained and ready to take on a complex challenge.

I can dream.

~~~
deepGem
I more or less left full time work when I was 39 to pursue startups. The
reasoning was exactly on the lines of what you have described. It's been 2
years and the journey has been fraught with failures. One, it's become really
hard for me to find a co-founder. Almost none of the guys in my friend circle
are willing to take the risks associated with startups. I've attended a pre-
accelerator to find a co-founders but haven't had any luck in finding the
right person. Two, I'm just getting lazy because of the financial cushion. I
mean, it's not much but still some sort of lethargy has set in since I don't
have a pressing problem to solve. Until I get to the stage where things kick
off, I bet this is going to be the norm. On one hand I have a financial
cushion, on the other I know that the cushion won't mean much in the next 10
years. So, I'm constantly thinking about self sufficiency down the line. So, a
combination of no cofounder + no exponential idea + procrastination = My life
has become quite miserable. I mean, sure on the surface I project an image of
it's all good, if you know what I mean.

~~~
tixocloud
I'm curious to know what are the things you've been thinking about working on?
I've experienced the challenge of finding a co-founder in my immediate circle
but looking beyond that, there are plenty of potentials.

I know a startup called Wagepoint that started with a co-founders from vastly
different age groups.

~~~
deepGem
I started working on recording meetings and converting the recordings to
meeting minutes with actionable items. Not a trivial task. My idea was to
build an iPhone app with ML in the cloud. I did some initial market survey and
found no takers for this idea. I spoke to startups, mid-enterprises and even
law firms. I got one positive response from a VC who said this could be useful
in tracking the meetings he has with founders as most of them go untracked but
I was not too convinced (perhaps I was wrong). So dropped that idea and tried
on some ideas around computer vision, prompted by the problems some of the
customers were elucidating to while validating the above idea. "We don't
really care about meetings but can you use machine learning to monitor people
? I am not a big fan of surveillance. After this I have drifted quite a bit
around the last year or so. Current situation - no direction. Just having a
side thought on doing something around high definition maps. Looked for a job
to fill up some savings, but boy the interviewing phenomenon is nuts. I
haven't interviewed in like 15 years. So got back to doing leetcode and
Hackerrank.

~~~
sleet
I know you've dropped your first idea but you may want to take a look at
[https://transcribeme.com](https://transcribeme.com)

------
leonroy
One thing to note is that 'young college drop out makes billions' is a more
compelling story than 'middle aged, well educated person with good savings
makes billions'.

The former sells more clicks and hence advertising dollars - it conjures the
notion that anyone can do it. The latter suggests at least a decade of work
experience, probably an education and some money.

It's clear which story is going to end up trending on the news and the
public's consciousness.

~~~
gitgud
'young college drop out makes billions'

*Translates to: "someone made a lot of money + no effort required!"

~~~
TeMPOraL
"... just one weird trick. Maybe I can do that too! I should read this article
- maybe some parts of the secret are revealed in it."

------
volgo
I think there's a little bit of confirmation bias mixed with a bit of jealousy
toward younger developers.

The fact is, technology doesn't really matter that much to the success of a
business. Business sense, ability to spot what's next, and a fair bit of risk
taking attitude are what matters. Older engineers don't fare better than
younger engineers in starting a business not because they're worse at
engineering, but that after a certain point engineering skills simply don't
matter.

SAP, Adobe, IBM, all have terrible engineering culture, but rake in money.
Facebook started with janky PHP. There are only rare instances where the
technology itself was the differentiator in business. Maybe if you're working
on advanced AI or weapon design or something

~~~
tibbetts
Weapon design is all about government contracts, which generally require
experience. Even Iron Man was using his dad’s existing corporate vehicle.

Advanced AI usually depends on finding a business model, which requires
experience. And places like Deep Mind were started by researchers who had been
at it a few decades.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I have the feeling weapons design & manufacturing looks the way it looks
because the advanced countries aren't really fighting and expecting to fight
any serious war with each other. This makes it safe for the contractors to
suck excessive amounts of money from the government while delivering very
little, and for the whole endeavour to become one big political battlefield.

War was always the thing that connected humanity to physical reality - 2+2 may
very well be 10000 on the procurement document, but it'd better equal 4 when
you're trying to aim your cannons at the invading forces. With no war,
effectiveness (and thus good engineering) is no longer a strong criterion for
success of a weapon design.

------
montrose
If this result is surprising to HN readers, it is probably because this list
of the last 100 IPOs is also surprising:

[https://www.iposcoop.com/last-100-ipos/](https://www.iposcoop.com/last-100-ipos/)

Only 19 of the 100 most recent IPOs are classified as "technology" companies.
The rest are in categories like "health care" and "oil and gas."

There are a lot of high-growth companies that are not startups in the classic
sense of starting from nothing and winning by building a better mousetrap.
E.g. pharmaceutical companies commercializing research, where the founder is a
PI and probably a tenured professor who's at least 40.

------
dalek2point3
here is the full paper in case anyone is interested:
[http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-
ben/htm/Ag...](http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-
ben/htm/Age%20and%20High%20Growth%20Entrepreneurship.pdf)

~~~
swyx
why exactly does NBER charge for any of its taxpayer funded papers?

~~~
subnaught
NBER is not a governmental organization.

------
kozikow
I would like to see the data broken down by startup profile. I suspect that
the ideal age differs between B2B and B2C startups.

B2C have smaller chance of success, but the success is bigger. Ideal B2C
founder is young. Most of enormous tech successes (e.g. Facebook, Google) are
B2C companies founded by founders before 30.

B2B have higher chance of success, but the success is smaller. Ideal B2B
founder is middle-aged. There are more succesfull B2B startups than B2C
starups, what increases the total mean.

~~~
AstralStorm
Please provide examples of B2C success that are other than Apple, Google or
Facebook founded by people under 30. (No, Microsoft is B2B.)

~~~
Infernal
Jeff Bezos was 29 when he decided to quit his full time job and 30 when he
founded Amazon. Close enough?

------
redm
As I've gotten older (ironically) I've felt this should be the case; key
decisions have such an impact on the success or failure of a startup, it's
much more likely you make the right key decisions the more experience and
wisdom you have.

~~~
thisrod
PG has written about that. He made the point that, in 1998, the people with
experience and wisdom all agreed that the world had enough search engines
already.

~~~
rimliu
I have an issue with "all". Unless he did interview all the people with
experience and wisdom. Otherwise it is just a soundbite.

------
deuslovult
I don't think this is surprising, but I'm also not surprised that VCs and
accelerators still trend toward younger founders.

It makes sense to me that older (successful) founders likely leverage their
own experience and network to a greater extent, but this isn't necessarily
what seed stage investors are looking for. I think investors are more in the
game of betting on people/teams, injecting their own experience and network as
leverage. Older founders have less need, therefore less leverage- and older
founders without these support networks are poorly positioned anyway.

Theres a big difference between running a successful small business and
architecting a tech startup.

~~~
tibbetts
Venture capital is a hits business, and if you want to invest in an
entrepreneur there is benefit towards getting them the first time. Marc
Benioff has 13 years of Oracle experience when he started Salesforce, and he
already had plenty of access to capital and expertise.

------
Bucephalus355
In art the term for this is “young geniuses and old masters”. We are all
familiar with the trope of a ‘young genius’ but I think it says something that
art, a field older than any language or building, has a specific category
carved out for those who reach distinguished success in old age...

------
mrkstu
This aligns with my observation and current impulse. I've been extremely
hesitant to do my own startup- imposter syndrome maybe, but more likely
healthy skepticism about the odds for success.

Now that I'm in my mid-40s I'd be much more comfortable taking on the task.
Wide life experience, learning to interact with and observe human tendencies,
and learning to overcome internal and external obstacles seems like fertile
ground for business success.

------
smoyer
I dug up the links for two past age polls on HN to see what the average age of
the HN reader might be:

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734)

* [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=517039)

PG's comment suggests that you shouldn't trust self-reported data on HN but
it's interesting that polls taken in 2009 and 2013 are at least "eyeball
correlated" (the top 5+ age brackets are in the same order). I have a few more
thoughts that are probably more like wild guesses (since you can't assume an
even distribution of start-up founders over that population) but my gut is
telling me that if you're here you're more likely to be a founder than say
Slashdot.

Since the last poll was so long ago, here's an updated one for 2018 with
categories for founders versus non-founders in each age bracket:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16809398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16809398)

------
blawson
The paper doesn’t appear to be able identify more than the age distribution of
the founders from the dataset, unfortunately.

Would be interesting to know how many of the successful older founders were
unsuccessful younger founders previously.

~~~
tibbetts
Or moderator successful younger founders. Using the first startup as a
launching point is even easier when you clear a few million than when you
“fail”.

------
Russell91
4 of 5 of the biggest tech company founders were in their early 20s. So the
biggest ideas clearly slanted towards young visionary founders, but the
statistics do skew back towards older founders for all but the largest
companies.

~~~
dkural
Apple's true success came with Second Steve i.e. mature Steve, not first
Steve. Amazon, Oracle, Intel founders weren't in their 20s.

Microsoft, Google, and Facebook indeed were started by young founders. Twenty
years later Google might be the only meaningful one standing. Time will tell.

~~~
s2g
> Twenty years later Google might be the only meaningful one standing. Time
> will tell.

It's been more than 20 years and Microsoft is still right there.

------
s2g
What were these people doing at 25/30/35/40?

~~~
drenvuk
Short answer: becoming experts at their craft, building business relationships
and filling their coffers.

Trying to start a successful business is much easier when you know how to get
stuff done, have access to people who can get stuff done in areas you can't,
and have enough money to buy time, help and resources to get stuff done.

Young people typically are lacking in one or more of those areas but sometimes
it works out.

~~~
awl130
or failing at their 1st/2nd/3rd tries. that's where i was.

------
mcbreezy
I'm 37. I constantly remind myself that Craigslist, Wikipedia, Salesforces,
Intel, etc. were founded by someone >=35 years of age[0], and that, since I
live a healthy lifestyle have at least 30 great years ahead of me (on
average).

[https://readwrite.com/2013/09/27/jimmy-wales-to-silicon-
vall...](https://readwrite.com/2013/09/27/jimmy-wales-to-silicon-valley-grow-
up/)

~~~
s2g
If you want to waste it working.

~~~
imgabe
If you consider starting your own company a waste, you definitely shouldn't
start one.

