[jknoepfler]

I honestly can't understand why this would shock anyone with experience in engineering. As a senior developer, I'm vastly more able to realize ideas than I was even three years ago. I also know vastly more. I'm able to understand cutting-edge systems and language research that I couldn't before. I'm able to design systems quickly and more reliably. I'm able to separate good ideas from bad ideas more reliably. I'm better with people and managing my own ego, and therefore able to navigate interpersonal situations more reliably.

I'm also financially stable and have deep savings, so I'm able to take time off to pursue ideas more reliably.

After a few more years, particularly as I gain leadership experience, I expect to be even more effective.

There's literally no down-side to getting older in terms of my ability to bootstrap a successful company.

[shubhamjain]

I think you're missing the bigger point. Most people work on problems that they've seen or experienced. For the young, it tends to be dating, social media, or some sort of e-commerce. They chase trends and hype. When you gain experience, you get exposed to an entirely different set of problems—problems with workflow, business processes, and general efficiency. Problems where you can deliver real value.

This was brilliantly expressed in this blog post [1]. Both the young and the old, stand at a disadvantage. Experienced folks have a better idea about worthy problems, but they're shackled with liabilities and lack of time commitment. Young people have a lot more freedom, but they don't have a good idea about the problems that are worth it.

[1]: http://000fff.org/the-problem-with-problems/

[austincheney]

The youth buzz has nothing to do with engineering potential.

Young people tend to be more free of external responsibilities: marriage, children, job contracts, consumer debt, professional associations, expensive educational entanglements, and so forth. This makes young people more available to take giant risks with less apprehension (they have less to lose).

There is also giant marketing buzz when an uneducated 18 year old female creates something vaguely interesting, but nobody cares when a 45 year old man creates something absolutely revolutionary until they old it in their hands. Case in point: Elizabeth Holmes.

[guylepage3]

I used to think the same way but what I have witnessed over the years is that my entrepreneur friends who are married with children tend to be just as risk taking as young single ones.

I feel entrepreneurship is a mentality. Entrepreneurs will always take risk where they see opportunity. The risk just seems to become less foolhardy as they get older. No stats on this just an observation.

[georgeecollins]

I don't think the poster is talking about propensity to entrepreneurship. I think the poster is talking about the propensity to generate media buzz. Young people make appealing subjects and it is exciting when they are smart and ambitious.

[gexla]

> This makes young people more available to take giant risks with less apprehension (they have less to lose).

Is this a contradiction? How can there be risk if there's nothing to lose?

[Infernal]

Maybe a valid rephrasing would be "This makes young people more able to take actions that older folks with more obligations would consider to be giant risks".

[sleet]

I agree but there's probably a limit on that sentiment.

If you start a family you are likely to become more risk adverse, this would increase again as you approach retirement.

[codazoda]

True, but ~45 may be a golden age again. By then your kids may be starting to becoming self sufficient, retirement is still 20 years off, and you've lived through a fair number of financial problems. Your retirement plans might be coming together and the world is starting to look more rosey. Plus, you find yourself feeling like you're nearing the end of your "youth"; you're aged but you still feel good. Perhaps you become less worried about the risk and you're well trained and ready to take on a complex challenge.

I can dream.

[deepGem]

I more or less left full time work when I was 39 to pursue startups. The reasoning was exactly on the lines of what you have described. It's been 2 years and the journey has been fraught with failures. One, it's become really hard for me to find a co-founder. Almost none of the guys in my friend circle are willing to take the risks associated with startups. I've attended a pre-accelerator to find a co-founders but haven't had any luck in finding the right person. Two, I'm just getting lazy because of the financial cushion. I mean, it's not much but still some sort of lethargy has set in since I don't have a pressing problem to solve. Until I get to the stage where things kick off, I bet this is going to be the norm. On one hand I have a financial cushion, on the other I know that the cushion won't mean much in the next 10 years. So, I'm constantly thinking about self sufficiency down the line. So, a combination of no cofounder + no exponential idea + procrastination = My life has become quite miserable. I mean, sure on the surface I project an image of it's all good, if you know what I mean.

[CalRobert]

Sorry to hear it, but thank you for sharing. It's likely people with your experience are less likely to share it than those who've been successful and I worry it gives a skewed view of the likelihood that a startup will make you happier.

One question - have you only looked at "exponential ideas"? Maybe there's a small but reasonably profitable endeavour out there - a lifestyle business?

[deepGem]

"Maybe there's a small but reasonably profitable endeavour out there" I am actually thinking about just this. Let's see.

[tixocloud]

I'm curious to know what are the things you've been thinking about working on? I've experienced the challenge of finding a co-founder in my immediate circle but looking beyond that, there are plenty of potentials.

I know a startup called Wagepoint that started with a co-founders from vastly different age groups.

[deepGem]

I started working on recording meetings and converting the recordings to meeting minutes with actionable items. Not a trivial task. My idea was to build an iPhone app with ML in the cloud. I did some initial market survey and found no takers for this idea. I spoke to startups, mid-enterprises and even law firms. I got one positive response from a VC who said this could be useful in tracking the meetings he has with founders as most of them go untracked but I was not too convinced (perhaps I was wrong). So dropped that idea and tried on some ideas around computer vision, prompted by the problems some of the customers were elucidating to while validating the above idea. "We don't really care about meetings but can you use machine learning to monitor people ? I am not a big fan of surveillance. After this I have drifted quite a bit around the last year or so. Current situation - no direction. Just having a side thought on doing something around high definition maps. Looked for a job to fill up some savings, but boy the interviewing phenomenon is nuts. I haven't interviewed in like 15 years. So got back to doing leetcode and Hackerrank.

[sleet]

I know you've dropped your first idea but you may want to take a look at https://transcribeme.com

[Horrabin]

Hmm, Wagepoint. I was involved in vetting the younger of the two to the older. They both had similar interests and the experience of the older complemented the energy and enthusiasm of the younger.

[shaqbert]

Sounds like you need a young gun co-founder to complement your expertise with the energy and enthusiasm of youth.

[sharemywin]

tried to check out your website www.callindra.com it doesn't go anywhere. Do you have a current website?

[deepGem]

I don't have a current website yet. Thanks for pointing this out. I have a static page at callindra.com (works without the www) I have to fix the Godaddy DNS. Will do.

[jcadam]

I'm 37 and absolutely cannot imagine myself working for the man for another 30+ years. I can't seem to last more than 2-3 years at any one job before becoming bored out of my skull. My present position, which I've been at for ~6 months, already has me mired deep in ennui (It was utterly unchallenging from day 1 - but the pay is great).

I want nothing more than to quit and strike out on my own, but financial obligations (kids, mortgage, etc.) are holding me back. My wife doesn't understand why I make a comfortable six-figure salary but am so discontented with my career. Maybe I feel like I'm running out of time?

[chasedehan]

+1 I could have written this exact same thing.

[ojbyrne]

Not everybody starts a family. In fact, in terms of the “traditional family,” it’s not even a majority anymore.

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-the-american-fam...

[drawkbox]

On the flipside, kids can add immense motivation and drive. Also you can dictate your schedule more to spend more time with kids/family if you work from home more. I went independent/entrepreneur full on when my son was starting high school, I wish I had done it earlier and done more projects/products for myself earlier.

[jknoepfler]

I can certainly concede that achieving "ramen profitability" while living off savings is substantially less exciting while trying to pay down a mortgage and save up for one's childrens' college tuition.

[sanderjd]

> while trying to pay down a mortgage

I don't really get this. I just recently bought a house. Paying down my mortgage is just a bit more expensive than renting my apartment was. Leases are a year long, I think I could sell my house within that period of time, and we wouldn't need to ask our landlord's permission. Why is a mortgage strictly worse for living off of savings?

[Swizec]

> Why is a mortgage strictly worse for living off of savings?

It’s not strictly worse but I assume it feels like a bigger commitment with more disastrous consequences should anything go wrong?

Foreclose on your house, your biggest asset is gone. That thing you worked for for so long.

Get kicked out of rented place. Eh, wasn’t yours anyway. Find smaller one or in a worse location, which you can afford.

Either way in my case buying is strictly worse because I can’t afford the down payment so there’s really just one option. Well, one comfortable option. I could always go homeless I guess. Would save me a lot per month ...

[jstandard]

> Paying down my mortgage is just a bit more expensive than renting my apartment was.

Unless you already have a substantial nest egg or took out an expensive mortgage, your life savings were substantially reduced by the down payment. In addition to a more expensive monthly payment there are property taxes, maintenance costs ($ and time), HOA fees, and other burdens depending on your region and property type.

[tytytytytytytyt]

What do you do if the neighborhood or market changes and you really can't sell your house after a year?

> Paying down my mortgage is just a bit more expensive than renting my apartment was.

That might depend on where you are and other factors.

> Why is a mortgage strictly worse for living off of savings?

Maybe it's not and people are just hedging their bets?

[ghufran_syed]

Any reason why the kids can’t pay for their own tuition? Isn’t that what government student loans are for?

[CalRobert]

Because university is a fantastically overpriced and surprisingly unconvoluted system for turning government-guaranteed un-dischargeable debt in to administrators' and football coaches' salaries via misery and virtual indentured servitude.

That is, a system that perpetrates upon people who have not gained the mental tools necessary to understand what they're agreeing to as a result of the US' staggeringly ineffective secondary schools, but who _have_ been convinced that not attending college is a guaranteed marker of social inadequacy by a marketing engine that pushes the message "You're a worthless person if you don't go to college" in to culture at every possible juncture?

[thebradbain]

Federal Direct Student Loans, available to undergraduate students at a relatively low fixed rate (but still higher than say, a decent mortgage on a house), only allow a student to take out about $6000/year.

But as college tuition skyrockets (mine is $70k/year, and increasing, and I have a brother at an equivalently priced institution too!), that wont cut it. The rest must either come from personal/family finances, be taken out from the federal government in solely the parent’s name (Federal Direct Plus Parent Loan, with a higher interest rate than direct student loans) or, if that’s not an option, a private lender (usually with an even higher rate).

With circumstances like they are and pitiful stopgaps like these, it’s no wonder my parents waited so long to have children so that they could afford to send them to school. Unfortunately, that’s not an option for most families. The student loan crisis in America really is terrifying.

[CalRobert]

This is a big part of why my wife and I emigrated, but that option is pretty drastic.

More generally, perhaps we'll finally see people question if college offers the best return on an investment of 100 grand+ and 4+ years of life.

[jcadam]

At some point enrollment at public universities should fall off a cliff (the prestigious institutions that serve mostly wealthy families will be fine, I'm sure). One would think...

[jcadam]

I went to college on an ROTC scholarship, so that's another option (of course, you're an indentured servant to Uncle Sam for 8 years after graduating - that may or may not be worse than obligating yourself to lenders via student loans, depending on your perspective).

[jknoepfler]

no, there isn't. I personally paid my way with loans and work, but I wouldn't mind paying a portion of a public university education for my children. Remember you generally end up cosigning loans, so if your kid flakes out, you're on the line anyway.

[TeMPOraL]

Isn't saving for kids' college an American tradition?

Also, it seems that in the US, student loans are a pretty heavy burden to take on.

[watwut]

Maybe the young risk too much. In that case, being more risk averse could be statistical advantage. There seems to be persistent underlying assumption that more risk taking is always better, that is unlikely to be true. Optimal risk taking amount is not necessary "highest possible".

[wellboy]

Yes, but you also already have a more limited idea space, because you are not really trying crazy ideas, while the young think everything's possible.