[elbrodeur]

I think this is a huge part of it. As you get older you naturally acquire and subsequently have to maintain things -- they can be material (a mortgage, car payments, insurance, etc), emotional (dog that needs walking, kids that need feeding, wife that needs attention) or other obligations. And that's just obligations. There are other reasons why startups fail to convince older, more mature and more experienced developers/engineers.

Kids fresh out of college are easy to convince for little or no money and the slim chance of glory. As you get older you are more realistic: Even if this company is successful it won't make me rich. Even if the technology is awesome to work on it may not make the company successful.

We tried really hard to grab a couple of really brilliant engineers right after we closed our angel round. The reality? While what we were working on was cool, they could make twice as much as we could afford to pay until we closed our Series A and even though our options package was decent, it wasn't generous enough to make them rich even if we had a generous buyout or IPO (which, you know, who knows if that will ever happen). Plus it takes 4 years to vest.