

Busting a few myths of tech entrepreneurship related to age, education, location  - ilamont
http://dobbscodetalk.com/index.php?option=com_myblog&show=Entrepreneurs-and-Tech-Startups-Whos-Doing-What-When-.html&Itemid=29

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dennykmiu
I was 47 years old when I started my most recent startup (I am now 52). I am
the 3rd oldest among my co-Founders (the 2nd oldest will be celebrating his
60th birthday this summer). I am also the only one on the team who had any
kind of previous startup experience. We struggled for three years and took no
salaries (1st year was conceptual, 2nd year to develop product, 3rd year we
started shipping). The company is five years old and has been profitable for
two years. It was recently selected for the Emerging Company of the Year Award
by Frost & Sullivan. I also decided to take an early retirement early this
year to write my book and travel with my parents and my kids. We took no VC
money and we control our own distiny. We were successful for the same reasons
that all startups are successful. We were dedicated, we were tenacious, we
were lucky and we focus our energy on making sure that there are as many
people as possible who care about our success and not our failure. It also
helps that we took no shortcut, in life or in business. We work hard to keep
every friends that we have and we didn't try to make new enemies.

Sometimes the good guys do get to win, even if we were just a bunch of old
farts. So there is hope for all of us.

Good luck, everyone.

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pg
I don't see what myths this is busting. Presumably their definition of a tech
company included a lot more than web startups. No one doubts that founders of
biotech companies or hardware companies tend to be in their 30s or 40s.

~~~
edw519
I wonder what their analysis would look like if it _was_ only web startups.

At Startup School I found myself older than most of the people I befriended.
Was that because mostly younger people are doing web startups or mostly
younger people make up this community? (Or both)

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inovica
No, its because you're 80 years old! Just kidding. I think that the people
attracted to Startup School might be more suited to younger people partly for
networking. I didn't feel the need to go as I knew that it would be online
afterwards and I'm comfortable and confident in the network I have now (not
saying it can't be expanded) but when you're young and just starting out its
all about building knowledge. Anyway, thats my take on it.

~~~
edw519
"I'm comfortable and confident in the network I have now"

I'm not. Whenever I talk about what I'm doing, I get the "Why would you want
to do that?" response or look.

But not at Startup School. Two days talking with cool people about stuff that
interests me was like therapy. When you talk about substance, no one cares
about the superficial.

~~~
kirubakaran
Thanks for grouping me under cool people :-p

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edw519
You were only semi-cool until the last day. Your discussion of generating
python source from other apps while eating a burrito and texting pushed you
over the top.

</sarcasm>

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DocSavage
The survey doesn't consider serial entrepreneurs. They just ask the age of the
founder during the _current_ company's incorporation. (For example, Andreessen
would contribute an older data point with Ning even though he was a
prototypical young guy success story.)

Also, I think the attention paid to the Ivy-League is unwarranted given other
possible groupings in the data. If you look at the data in the paper, it looks
like you can create a non-Ivy "Entrepreneurship" league comprised of the
following schools: MIT, Penn St, Stanford, Berkeley, Missouri, USC, Texas, and
UVa. By my mental math, this 8 school league graduated just under 14% of the
founders compared to the 8% for the 8 school Ivy-League. Regional effects were
probably even more interesting, and you wonder what a SF area
(Berkeley/Stanford) + Boston area (MIT/Harvard) grouping would look like
compared to other regions.

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ilamont
More discussion on /.:

<http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/01/1729251>

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edw519
I found this read refreshing (and reassuring). As an "older"
hacker/entrepreneur, I have never figured out what's stopping me from doing
what so many 20-somethings are doing. (The answer is "nothing".)

Sure, I don't know many people with whom I can talk about my work. (Probably
why I'm here.) But I make up for that with lots of hands on experience. Almost
every day I run into some technical or business problem that I've encountered
somewhere before, making it a little easier to solve this time.

For a software startup, lots of things are important, but most important is
what you can build, which is poorly correlated to age, education, or location.
So no surprises here. Just nice to read about the other 90% once in a while.

~~~
mixmax
"I don't know many people with whom I can talk about my work"

I have the exact same feeling - nobody really seems to care, and I often get
blank stares and "why don't you just relax and enjoy life" comments.

Which is why I come here.

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raju
> "The average and median age of U.S.-born founders was 39 when they started
> their companies. Only about 1 percent of U.S.-born founders of tech
> companies were teenagers."

Yaay for me!

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sabat
"... most U.S.-born technology and engineering company founders are middle-
aged, well-educated, and hold degrees from a wide assortment of universities."

You mean there's hope for me? :-D 8-D

