
Paul Graham on why he doesn’t like seeing college-age and younger founders - kaboro
https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/01/paul-graham-on-why-he-doesnt-like-seeing-college-age-and-younger-founders/
======
rmason
TechCrunch just trying to make news. To me the greatest part of the video was
more stories about the antics of his friend Robert Morris.

Most on HN weren't even born yet when his worm took down a large part of the
net but I well remember it;<). I hadn't heard the story on how he took an
entire term off to relaunch Harvard on the Internet.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm)

~~~
clamprecht
I read Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll around 1990 (it covers RTM's story of
creating the "worm")... that book had such an effect on my life. Later, while
in prison (during the startup boom of 1995-2000), I remember reading another
article talking about how RTM had become a millionaire in the startup scene
(presumably with Viaweb). That article, again, had a huge effect on my life
after prison.

~~~
tptacek
Paul Graham is actually a minor character in Katie Hafner and John Markoff's
book (_Cyberpunk_) about the incident.

------
andrewstuart
Perhaps there is a tendency for older people to value older people more highly
than younger people, and conversely for younger people to devalue older people
in favor of younger people.

As a famous young person once said "Young people are just smarter.".

It appears the message here from PG is that "Younger people have intellect but
perhaps not the demonstrated tenacity and drive needed to succeed, and
tenacity and drive trump intellect when it comes to entrepreneurialism.

~~~
rmason
Actually it was Mark Zuckerberg who said young people were just smarter. It
was my generation (the boomers) who had the famous saying to never trust
anyone over thirty. Each generation has a variant of the same mistake ;<).

~~~
jimmaswell
I'm not sure why the statement should be so controversial. In a cross-
sectional study of the current population, every measure but crystallized
intelligence peaked around 25: [https://medium.com/psyc-406-2015/how-fast-
does-iq-decline-ca...](https://medium.com/psyc-406-2015/how-fast-does-iq-
decline-can-you-do-anything-about-it-f5ca370d8b62)

The second study mentioned in the article, which is longitudinal rather than
cross sectional, has more optimistic results for older ages, but as it says,
there are problems with tracking the same people over time, such as them just
getting better at IQ tests.

Regardless, the first, cross-sectional study gives clear answers to the
current relation of age to intellectual ability.

Age shouldn't be a factor in hiring, only ability, but it's not unreasonable
to say that, at least right now, you can expect people in their 20s to perform
better at many tasks.

It's also hard not to just agree with the "young people are just smarter"
statement based on intuition. When have you ever heard of a 20 year old
needing help figuring out a television remote? Something clearly changed
between the time that someone learned to drive a car and when they had to be
shown for the 50th time how to upload a video from their camera to facebook.

------
DrNuke
Software is a commodity for complex or difficult industrial problems nowadays,
so domain expertise is as relevant as coding abilities to sustain a profitable
startup. Domain expertise cannot be acquired by chance and good scientists
that have been trained for a long time become entrepreneurs later in their
life, often after a stint in academy or corporation labs.

~~~
corporateslaver
Is it a commodity? Why is such a premium placed on senior engineers then?

------
a-dub
eh, read to me like he was suggesting that young people try living their damn
lives before shackling themselves to a business venture. you can always start
a business venture, but you're pretty much only young and full of wonder
once...

------
graycat
If you write some software for a very popular Web site, no one else need know
you were 60 years old, in a wheelchair, fired from IBM, and wearing sandals,
sweat pants, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. What matters is the Web site, the
design, the code, pleasing users, running ads, getting revenue.

------
graycat
So, Paul Graham (PG) gives us anxiety about startups, fear, uncertainty,
doubt, for young people getting stuck prematurely on a long track that might
be a mistake and losing out on their youth, etc.

Okay, there are no doubt examples that support that.

But PG's focus is a bit narrow, something like YC graduate and VC funded $100
billion in 10 years or bust.

Here is a bigger picture that is really more accurate and optimistic:

First, we should consider a wider range of _startups_ than "... $100 billion
...." We should note that the US is just awash in _startups_ , from Aunt
Martha's custom made wedding dresses and Joe's landscaping service to the full
range of Main Street businesses in villages, towns, ..., the largest cities,
border to border in the US, to much more. Some of these startups include Tom's
ambitious Web site. Tom's older brother is half way through his ugrad
electronics engineering degree and has taken a trip to China and lined up some
manufacturing for a new pocket, wireless electronics item for some special
purpose or other, uh, maybe letting Aunt Martha's customers send in good 3D
specifications of their body shapes from some ultrasonic signals.

Lesson: There's a LOT of _startup_ activity for all ages, both genders, all
education levels, etc. in the US. Some of these, maybe not Aunt Martha's
custom wedding dresses, maybe a young person's second startup if not their
first, might be big surprises and become the $100 billion.

Second, PG is too narrow on the influences, inputs, information, inspiration,
guidance, leadership, knowledge, experience, examples, etc. in practice
available, and often important, for young people in business. As for dolphins,
orcas, whales, wolves, big cats of Africa, ..., human children learn from
their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, family members, friends,
neighbors, etc. They might get to work in Uncle Harry's custom Web site
development service or some of their father's 7 fast food restaurants, get
started in wireless electronics from their grandfather, a senior engineer at
Qualcomm, etc. -- maybe learn high school math by age 10, calculus at 11,
vector analysis at 12, Maxwell's equations at 13 or some such and, then, do a
wireless startup, with some help from Uncle Harry!

Lesson: For a lot of young people who want to start businesses, there are a
LOT of information sources other than paying "full tuition" at the scary, solo
school of hard knocks and high probability of failure in any of several
respects that PG seems to paint.

------
clamprecht
And also, convicted felons make great startup hires!

Disclosure: convicted felon here

~~~
chrisco255
Yeah, a reformed person can be a great hire. Totally agreed.

~~~
pm90
I really think a distinction needs to be made b/w a reformed person and a
convicted felon. All convicted felons are not necessarily reformed persons,
and that distinction is very important.

------
borski
The confusing part to me is that YC started by appealing to college-age kids
in Boston. Has the focus changed?

~~~
TAForObvReasons
Not only was their first unicorn/public company started by college students
(dropbox), arguably some of the largest companies of the recent era were
started by college kids (facebook).

~~~
abledon
Your forgetting that the college kids of them only had to know basic php and
JavaScript to build a server + front end web UI. Now it’s at minimum 2 years
to learn the deep fundamentals of react/redux/graphql then tying it into
lambdas on the backend , maybe another year of study to learn full kubernetes
integration , then another year to fully grasp how to set up and side chain in
a deep learning pipeline with proper selection of production grade ML
framework. Learn them all then choose which one works best. After that to
reach youth in mobile sector , take 1.5 years to fully learn iOS and android
native platform builds . Etc etc . It’s not that college kids are too young .
It’s that they need to take the recommended time to learn and deploy all the
necessary tech to launch a successful startup!

EDIT: this was a \s piece but obviously it went over some peoples heads lol

~~~
Animats
_Now it’s at minimum 2 years to learn the deep fundamentals of react
/redux/graphql then tying it into lambdas on the back end, maybe another year
of study to learn full kubernetes integration , then another year to fully
grasp how to set up and side chain in a deep learning pipeline with proper
selection of production grade ML framework. Learn them all then choose which
one works best. After that to reach youth in mobile sector, take 1.5 years to
fully learn iOS and android native platform builds._

By which time the web crowd will have moved on to something else.

~~~
pinewurst
...even more floridly complex and requiring an even longer time to use well. I
think we’ve already contracted the Average Hot Lifetime to less than the
Effective Learning Period.

