

What is the average startup entrepreneur age? ie your age (I am 26 almost) - rokhayakebe


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pg
The avg for the last YC batch was 24.5. Range: 19 to 35.

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aswanson
I know the sample size is small, but how did the +30 people compare to their
younger peers, in terms of productivity/execution, dealing with adversity,
etc? Any noticeable difference in character due to age?

~~~
pg
The two main differences are that the older guys tend to be better presenters,
and more tied down geographically.

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tipjoy
Lots of talk about 'healthy white males' and 'guys' on news.yc tonight. I
understand women are in the minority, but we do exist. Correction: I just re-
checked the other post I was referring to and they said "healthy young male"
not "healthy white male". My apologies for the misquote.

~~~
aswanson
Sorry, ma'am. I happen to healthy and male, but with above average melanin.
Trust me, we are aware and very glad you exist.

~~~
tipjoy
Thanks. Just to be clear: this isn't about my 'feelings.' It's actually about
having a successful startup: one major reason people fund startups is because
they think the founders have the right characteristics that will make them
succeed. They're looking for a certain type of person, not just an idea.
Through its posts and comments, this community shares a mental model of what
type of person makes a successful founder. Having that image be of a
particular gender negatively impacts those of us who happen to be women or who
have women in their startup team.

This example from Founders at Work struck me: Caterina Fake, co-founder of
Flickr, related an anecdote where she and her partner, who was also her
husband, met with a VC firm. Caterina didn't fit the VC's mental model of a
founder. After the meeting the VC told her husband 'not to bring his wife to
VC meetings.'

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aswanson
>After the meeting the VC told her husband 'not to bring his wife to VC
meetings.'

Another data point clustering around vc ineptitude. Why are the fools always
employed as gatekeepers?

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nostrademons
If they weren't fools, they'd be on the other side of the gate...

~~~
run4yourlives
or employing gatekeepers...

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sanj
I think the better metric is

age / (# of startups)

in my case: 36/3 = 12

~~~
nanijoe
So how did those 3 startups work out?

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sanj
The first was a group of college friends who wrote software for handhelds. It
was really fun, and made enough to keep us above the grad student poverty
line. We also always had nice(ish) computers. Given my low expectations, I
count Scrawl as a success.

It was (effectively) cannibalized to start PatientKeeper. We raised ~$70M in
venture and our software is now in use at an amazing number of hospitals.
Though it hasn't had (I love this euphemism) liquidity event, I count it as a
success. We employ ~90 people and touch thousands of physicans and hundreds of
thousands of lives.

At the risk of being a tease, I'm not ready to talk about the third.

~~~
run4yourlives
>We employ ~90 people and touch thousands of physicians and hundreds of
thousands of lives.

Only in startup land would you have to justify that as a "success" by
inserting the "although it hasn't had a liquidity event".

Congrats on creating what seems to be a healthy business!

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trekker7
This post is crying out for a bar graph based poll.

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DocSavage
43 and 43. (My first startup was at 31. My partner/wife's first startup was at
20.)

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gustaf
26 when we started, turned 27 in June

~~~
gustaf
rest of the team was 24, 24 and 26 when we started heysan

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psb
39 and trying to get my first startup done before 40

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gibsonf1
41 (first startup (architecture) @ 30) & 33

~~~
gibsonf1
Before architecture: Victoria Bicycles (startup @ 17), Moondog BBS @17 (Used a
commodore 64's random access floppy drive to create a dbase sytem), Business
Design Consultants (Used an IBM PC w/ Watson soundcard and Dbase to create
touch tone ordering system) @ 22

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aaroneous
I'm 24, my biz partner just turned 32.

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pc
18

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nostrademons
24 and 26 (me).

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elad
31\. My first startup was at 22 though.

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kashif
26 and 27(me)

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daniel-cussen
19\. Started the nerd club at 18.

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jkush
29 (but 30 5 weeks from now).

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vegashacker
29 and 29

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rms
21 and 22

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blored
23 and 25.

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chaostheory
29 and 30

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wouter
I'm 23!

~~~
Leon
As am I!

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PStamatiou
21

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david
17

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epi0Bauqu
28

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rbitar
26

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andreyf
20

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chadboyda
28

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portLAN
69

~~~
rokhayakebe
Seriously?

~~~
portLAN
"We used to have a joke in college, that the definition of a college man was
somebody who couldn't count up to 70 without laughing." -- Don Knuth, after
recommending a 69-bit processor design

[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3147833455273735180#...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3147833455273735180#17m50s)

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cstejerean
22

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samson
22

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run4yourlives
32

~~~
Shooter
I'm also 32.

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yrashk
almost 26

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thomasswift
26

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dcurtis
20

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rwebb
28

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dottertrotter
25

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edu
23

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vuknje
26

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mytix
20

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bsaunder
36

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falsestprophet
20

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redrory
19

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mkull
24

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tyler
22

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motoko
23

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jamiequint
22

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cellis
20

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gregp
22

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aarontait
19... Looks like I'm the youngest one... Suckers!

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mattculbreth
Sucker? Who's drinking the Heineken? :)

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pc
Those of us not governed by inane US laws?

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cellis
heh. Sometimes I wish. i mean, since i was 18 (and was in college) I've known
kids 21 and up....So if we wanted a six pack it was there. But only once did
we ever get into a club, and I never was desperate enough to dish out $100 for
a fake

~~~
rms
If I would have had the spare $1300 for the printers + magnetic strip
reader/writer plus an oddly calibrated internal risk calculus I would have
really been in business.

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far33d
I have a friend who almost got a felony conviction b/c of fake ids. But that
was the 80s. These days, I don't think you'd get a plea.. identity crime is a
way bigger deal.

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rms
Yeah, crime is a bad idea.

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thejefe711
17

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dexter
20

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ranparas
While you guys talk about age, i'm going to continue my focus on my end goals
!

~~~
euccastro
Godspeed and good luck!

(Alas, you're still 76 keystrokes behind the guys who took 2 to state their
age.)

P.S.: 32

~~~
mtbnnet
Any body working on this longterm new market?

From <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3576594.stm>

.......The Austrian team encoded their qubits using a property of light
particles, also called photons, known as polarisation. This property describes
the direction in which they oscillate.

Quantum teleportation relies on an aspect of physics known as "entanglement",
whereby the properties of two particles can be tied together even when they
are far apart. Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance".

~~~
cellis
Nah, but I would work on WiTricity if I could.

