[python123]

Great story and a perfect illustration of why old people shouldn't shoot for the stars. Old people do not understand tech trends. They try to, but it is beyond their ability. Friendster was a site created by old people, run by people, and filled with old people users. Anything that starts from the old will never migrate to the young. Old people are not leaders. They do not determine the trends. Facebook got it right from the start by restricting it to colleges. I'm sure people wanted to open it up sooner, but the talented young leaders of Facebook knew that the next big thing would be determined by how young people choose to adopt it. Old people would follow like cattle later on, which they did. Facebook even made sure to hire young talent at the start because any bad hire would hurt the company when it was small. If you haven't made something of yourself by 30, don't think you're gonna quit your job as a career software engineer and come up with the next big thing. If you wanna do a start-up, you're only chance is to create a lifestyle business or maybe have a mild exit, which is still pretty good.

[spokey]

Spoken with the false confidence of youth.

Here's a few examples of fairly revolutionary achievements post-30, even within the relatively narrow field of tech startups:

* Jimmy Wales was 36 when Wikipedia was founded. Larry Sanger was 34.

* Steve Jobs was 30 when he founded NeXT, 31 when he took over Pixar, 40 when Toy Story, their first major film was released, and 42 when he returned to Apple and led them to a major market turnaround, OS X, the iPod/iTunes, the iPhone/AppStore, etc.

* Jeff Bezos was 30 when he founded Amazon, 37 before it turned a profit.

* John McCarthy was 31 when he first designed LISP.

* Marc Benioff was 35 when he co-founded Salesforce.com (I don't know how old his cofounders were.)

* David Winer was 33 when he founded UserLand, 41 before they started offering web publishing software.

* Larry Ellison was 33 when he founded Oracle, 35 when they made their first sale, 40 when Oracle became an ACID-database.

* PG was 40 when YCombinator first launched.

That's just off the top of my head (I had to look up the dates) and I don't particularly pay attention to the age of tech company founders. I'm sure there are dozens of better examples.

For a more comprehensive survey, see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1431263

I actually kinda hope you're trolling with this comment, you're way off base.

[lsb]

You're refuting it with examples of men in their mid-30s? That's quite an interesting definition of old age.

[python123]

Why don't you actually read my comment? I said that old people with no achievements aren't going to suddenly become great entrepreneurs.

Jimmy Wales - extremely successful options and futures trader

Steve Jobs - I forget what company he was involved with before NeXT, but I think it was pretty big

Jeff Bezos - one of the top people at D.E. Shaw, right under Shaw himself

John McCarthy - programming languages don't really count as entrepreneurship, but I'm sure you could find many examples of old people creating languages

Marc Benioff - youngest VP in Oracle history

David Winer - I really have no idea what UserLand is

Larry Ellison - ok, fine. I guess if you're trying to make Oracle, it's ok to be old. I don't mean that as a slight to Oracle, but I don't think Oracle's story applies to web startups.

PG - I didn't say anything about old people not being able to become investors

[spokey]

Now I know you're trolling. Good day.

[python123]

How on Earth is that trolling? I completely refuted your argument, and you can't respond so you call it trolling. None of those people were 30-year-old career software engineers who had achieved nothing and dreamed of entrepreneurship. They were all already successful.

And I know Hacker News is mostly that type of person, but you people need a reality check. You can downvote all you want, but it won't change anything. I bet you really wish it could because forums like this are probably all you have left. You're going to wake up tomorrow and do what you're doing. I'm going to wake up tomorrow and do what you dream of doing.

[Hates_]

"Anything that starts from the old will never migrate to the young. Old people are not leaders."

Yes, because everyone who uses the internet is young and because every great company is run by someone young. I honestly can't believe I'm reading a comment that seems to believe the web/business world exists only within a bubble of young people. A huge proportion of great businesses are/were started by "old" people and there are plenty of examples of tech businesses that have been spectacularly successful that were also started by "old" people.

[python123]

Most users are old people, but most users are also sheep. The shepherds are not old people. Name some great tech companies created by unaccomplished old people who just decided to flip on the entrepreneurial switch.

[RevRal]

<raises eyebrow>

Umm, what are you talking about? This is one of the least intelligent comments I've read on HN, and I've really tried to make sense of it.

You know what they say about Finnegan's Wake? That you can start from anywhere in the book, read to the end, start from the beginning, then read to where you initially started, and the book will make just as much sense.... Well, your comment is a little like that.

If there's a thesis in there, it's something like: "of course, old people ruin anything that has to do with technology." Which is disprovable.

[devinj]

I may not be old, but I still find your blatant ageism disturbing (I would say only slightly disturbing, except that you've taken this offensive viewpoint to something of an extreme-- so it's not slight at all). "Old people" can be just as hip, modern, and trendy as the rest. Sure, it doesn't fit the stereotype-- maybe it doesn't even fit the trends (I wouldn't know)-- but they can be. Not hiring people just because they're old is illegal and immoral (at least as much as discriminating on any blanket classification is, such as race, gender, religion, etc.).

[alanthonyc]

It's going to really suck to be you in about 15 years.

[philk]

That's a pretty sad piece of advice. If you're over 30 and haven't made something of yourself the best thing you can do is realize that time is passing you by and get moving rather than listen to this defeatist crap.

[donaq]

What are you, 12?

[iamwil]

both successes and failures don't only have one cause.