[throwaway40483]

I think you're looking at this wrong. It's not that a startup chooses between young/inexperienced/cheap vs old/experienced/expensive. It's that a startup doesn't get to choose because startup life is brutal. It basically requires you to have no family and kids, so only young single people are willing to do it.

[Retric]

Being 40+ does not prevent you from being single. Further, long hours and lack of skill are related. I am not saying you would always rather have say ~35 hours a week from John Carmack vs. 80 hour weeks from 2 or 3 awesome 22 year olds, but adding 22 year olds also scales poorly.

[ubernostrum]

No, VCs have told you that "startup life" requires this, and you willingly believed them without question.

It is possible to start a company without turning the first 10 employees into desiccated husks. It's just not possible to do that while also doing what your VCs think is necessary. Maybe that's a thing to work on changing...