[kyro]

I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20, finishing up graduate school, and for the most part feel young. But other than the pediatrics ward, the only other time I start to feel my age is when attending some of these startup events.

What I try to keep conscious of is knowing what's reported in the media and what isn't, which are often 2 completely different worlds. On TechCrunch, "kid genius makes $100m" is the story they want. It fits this age-old narrative of a child prodigy reaching success in half the time it takes a "normally smart" person to, like Mozart, Einstein.

And that media draws in huge amounts of young people hoping to fit that narrative. But what's not reported are the companies that are typically working on much harder and more boring problems -- problems that require an understanding by people who've been in industries for years. Look at any CrunchBase newsletter about the day's fundraising and acquisitions, and you'll find yourself surprised at how many medical/B2B/etc companies are being bought for $100m+. These aren't companies started by 22yo grads, but by people with extensive industry experience. And the (startup) media doesn't really give a damn about them.

That's not, in any way, to devalue startups started by younger people. There's little-to-no barrier to starting social apps and the like. They have their place in society and have shown to be successful, so I don't blame a fresh grad who wants to try his/her hand at it. But there is a whole world of other startups and companies that are working in more complicated and boring industries that could not have been started by people in their early 20s.

Experience still matters, as unsexy as it is.

[beat]

I came up with the idea for my startup when I was 47. I don't expect it to be able to make a living at it until I'm 49. Age? Pffth. Then again, I'm not hacking together "Facebook for cats" and hoping for some zeitgeist to make it magically successful while buckets of venture capital rain down on my head, either.

A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists. It came to me because I've been in the software industry for nearly two decades and have seen the same problems, over and over. I'm solving a real problem that I understand really well, with a straightforward monetization strategy from obvious customers. It's not something that could be knocked off in a weekend by a couple of dudes at a weekend hackathon.

The experience to see substantial problems and the patience to work on them comes with time. Don't worry about getting old.

That all said, my 40s have been the best creative period of my life, by far. I feel like all the things I learned and experienced in my first 40 years were just setting me up for what I can do today.

[elmuchoprez]

"A college kid would never have come up with what I'm building, because they wouldn't realize the problem I'm trying to solve actually exists."

This is such a key point. Sometimes it takes years, if not decades, of experience to even know that the problem exists. Put another way, if the problem can be solved by a 22-year-old with no experience in the field, there's a good chance they've misunderstood the problem.

[snorkel]

... And years of work experience to understand organizational dynamics to setup a healthy business helps too. It's more than the idea that matters, but can you build and run the team that will make that idea a reality. I know that when I was fresh out of college I didn't understand organizational dynamics at all. I've read many examples of young startups failing because of rookie management mistakes.

[6ren]

Yes, coming up with the problem is often the hard bit.

But it happens the other way too, in that many young inventors tackle problems because "they didn't realize they were 'impossible'". More knowledgeable folk can do this too, but it requires a certain... disrespect for authority. Like Einstein's flexibility with time and space (though he was young then; he didn't make breakthroughs in later life, possibly because he himself became an authority).

Fortune favours the delusional.

[beat]

It's not a matter of "didn't realize it's impossible". The problem young startup entrepreneurs have is they don't realize that valuable problems exist. Valuable problems tend to be industry-specific and narrowly defined, so you need to be at least aware of the problems of an industry, and the existing solutions/workarounds. Without industry experience at anything but being a college student and reading HN, how are you going to find problems to solve? That's why you see so many me-too social apps. You solve what you know, and if your most extensive experience with computers is Facebook and Twitter, that's your space for problems.

There are a couple of other factors to consider. First, there are problems that can be solved with new tech that couldn't be solved with old tech. The web opened up a huge front of new solutions over the past 10-20 years. Mobile is opening up another wave of solutions.

And finally, consider the "aspirin or vitamin" question. Vitamins are tempting, but aspirin sells better. Me, I'm working in more or less the monitoring space for configuration management. My key competition isn't other monitoring tools, it's the DevOps movement and automation tools like Chef and Puppet. When people have enterprise configuration management suck, those are the recommended solutions. But they're vitamins being sold as aspirin. Simply getting to where there's organizational buy-in to go to DevOps or to automate what was once manual is a whole fresh sort of pain. My competitive advantage is a near-painless dose of aspirin - immediate relief without having to change the whole model.

Ain't no college kid coming up with that.

[thisrod]

There's an obvious reason for Einstein to have gotten stuck: the subject of his later research, a quantum theory of gravity, really was too hard. The problem remains open today.

[chasing]

cough(Soylent)cough

[wahsd]

Soylent lulz as if that hasn't been done and done again. It's just snake oil under different name.

[aianus]

Please point me to an existing product I can buy today.

I've never looked forward to a product launch as much as this.

[DanBC]

Ensure (http://ensure.com/)

Fortisip (https://www.nutricia.co.uk/fortisip//)

[gotrecruit]

EAS Myoplex? There are a myriad of other Meal Replacement Powders on the market that has been around for decades, some of them designed to completely replace meals with specific ratios such as 40/40/20 (protein, carbs, fat) or more commonly, low-carb versions. Seriously, go to bodybuilding.com and look under the meal replacement category and you'll find a bunch of products that has figured this shit out decades before soylent.

[rusabd]

fatty fish or fatty meat

[david927]

I'm 46. I came up with my idea at 28 but it was complex and ambitious -- and it just kept growing and changing. It was chaos in my mind. But I would work on it, and then come up a level, see things from a higher perspective and everything would shrink and consolidate, gain order and orthogonality. This happened over and over, till I got it down to nothing. This took a huge amount of time and there is no way I could have come directly to it at 28.

I'm as creative and as smart as I was then, I don't think that has changed. But I'm wiser now -- about Computer Science, about systems -- and I have that perspective, which has made all the difference.

[gotrecruit]

just curious but are you saying you founded a startup at 46, of which the original idea was conceived when you were 28?

[pkteison]

I think you should pivot, catcanhazitrainbook.com is available, and the growing acceptance of domestic purrtnerships is nothing but pure up and to the right. I agree, college kids don't realize that felines have been marginalized in the new twerking paradigm - and how unfair is it that we send all these tweets around with no cats to chase them? You can get out in front of this and really change the world with your rockstar ninja buckets of vc fueled distributed map reduce haskell most viral housepet centered social network ever.

[danthewireman]

> That all said, my 40s have been the best creative period of my life, by far.

Agreed. Wrote my first novel in my 40s.

[japhyr]

> Experience still matters, as unsexy as it is.

Absolutely. I think what really makes the difference is whether people also carry the youthful mindset of always being ready to spot problems, and do something about it.

I have seen plenty of people with more experience than I have, who have lost the sense that they can actively make things better. It's the people who have experience, and still feel they can shape the world around them, who make things happen.

[rayiner]

> whether people also carry the youthful mindset of always being ready to spot problems, and do something about it.

I don't think that's a particularly youthful mindset. Indeed, much of the trend of Silicon Valley right now is the opposite: spot places where you can apply a "social something" even if there's no real underlying problem.

As a practical matter, people who are young tend to lack the experience to know what are the actual problems of the world. Does a 22 year old know what are the things that would, say, improve the efficiency of Intel's designers by 2x? What are the bottlenecks in their workflow or the roadblocks they deal with? They have no idea. Most actual problems, the hard ones, are encountered in contexts that young people have no experience with.

I posit that the youth worship in Silicon Valley has nothing to do with their aptitude for "problem solving." Rather, it has to do with the fact that: 1) advertising is the bedrock of Silicon Valley 2.0; and 2) The 18-25 demographic has long been key to the advertising industry. Who knows better than young 20-somethings what will sell to other young 20-somethings?

[jes5199]

also, 20-somethings won't complain when you work them to death

[johnjlocke]

ding ding ding We have a winner!

[sahglie]

It's also easier to under pay 20-somethings

[jes5199]

Yeah, and I've seen that in Portland and Seattle, but for some reason in the Bay Area plenty of companies are willing to compete on salary so you've got lots of 22-year-olds making at least $90k, but they work 12 to 16 hour days.

[mkr-hn]

It seems like Silicon Valley is up to at least 3.0.

[matwood]

Exactly. Treat every new project like your first, but also bring all your experience with you.

[mindcrime]

I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20, finishing up graduate school, and for the most part feel young. But other than the pediatrics ward, the only other time I start to feel my age is when attending some of these startup events.

Speaking as a 40 year old who is an early-stage startup founder , I'll say that your clock isn't necessarily close to running out. But, I will also add that time is one thing that you can never get back. I'm not real big on indulging in regret, but if I regret anything about my younger years, it is not being more aggressive and doing the startup thing sooner.

If you have a good idea, and you're 20-something, I'd advise you to go for it. If it doesn't work, well, you probably get another "at bat" or two in your life. If you wait too long, you eventually do start running into limitations, whether it is health issues, or additional commitments you may take on, in terms of raising a family or whatever, etc.

Experience is absolutely helpful, and I'm not sure I'd tell anybody to found a startup just for the sake of doing it, but if you legitimately have something in mind, you're passionate about it, and there seems to be a real shot at succeeding, I say take a crack at it now.

[PakG1]

But, I will also add that time is one thing that you can never get back. I'm not real big on indulging in regret, but if I regret anything about my younger years, it is not being more aggressive and doing the startup thing sooner.

I regret not being more aggressive when I was younger. But that doesn't mean I regret the things that I have done. I've still learned from everything I've done in life and still have good memories. So while I regret not being more aggressive before, that doesn't mean I'd necessarily want to trade one set of memories for another.

And adding to that, I think I would have just been full of hot air if I was more aggressive at a younger age. Some people can do it and be authentic. I don't think I was one of those people. And I don't think I'm simply rationalizing.

[mindcrime]

And adding to that, I think I would have just been full of hot air if I was more aggressive at a younger age. Some people can do it and be authentic. I don't think I was one of those people. And I don't think I'm simply rationalizing.

Yep, that's the infuriating, "catch 22" aspect of the whole thing. There are things you want to do at a certain age, in some regards, but you can't for whatever reason, but then when those reasons change, you've lost that time for good.

I feel the same way to a point... I couldn't have founded the startup I've founded, when I was 25, because I didn't have the technical knowledge, the business knowledge, the general maturity, etc. But the flip-side is, I'm getting older and I kinda look at this attempt as probably my last "at bat" with a chance of really living out the most exuberant of my hopes & dreams for life. I feel like if I fail now, I am probably done with big dreams. There just isn't enough time left on the clock, and I won't have the energy and drive and passion to start over from scratch.

[lectrick]

I'm 41. I'm a "hotshot web dev" (backend). Trust me, if you simply try to stay healthy/take care of yourself, there's PLENTY of runway left to start new things.

[ergest]

According to Vivek Wadhwa: "In a follow-up project, we looked at the backgrounds of 549 successful entrepreneurs in twelve high-growth industries. The average age of male founders in this group was 40, and the average age of female founders was 41. The majority had two or more kids." http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-12-02/national/35284...

[freyrs3]

> I often worry about whether my startup clock is running out. I'm closer to 30 than 20

To be fair the largest demographic of startup founders is in the 30-39 age bracket. While successful twenty-somethings with big exits is something the press likes to cover, they are very much outliers.

[spinlock]

I don't know where you're getting your data and I've forgotten where I got mine but I believe most companies are started by founders who are 50+ years old. Maybe my data includes 60 year olds, etc... As well.

But, we both agree it is not the 20 something demographic. 2 unsoirced opinions on the internet - that agree - have to be correct.

[frozenport]

Experience can trap you or not be relevant.

If you want to make money money money you probably shouldn't be spending your time deriving Maxwell's equations for nonlinear media. If you want to do algorithm design but spend all your time doing HPC you are not heading in the right direction. If keep justifying your continued sojourn into a `temporary` field due to the emotion baggage established by time investment (`experience`) it might prevent you from making risky but rewarding choices.

There is something to be said about he dangers of staying in your comfort zone - which is certainly the case for 8 years of university education.

If what we value is not in the direction established by our experience then we may find that experience is a shackle for our dreams and a guide down a path of misery.

[jsonne]

Its interesting to note that I recently read the average entrepreneur is age 35. It may just be selection bias by the press that makes it seem younger.

[mcv]

The only real advantage a 20 year old has over a 40 year old is that a 20 year old body can survive insane working hours, skipped sleep, sleeping under the desk, etc. Also, they don't have families and kids yet. That's why some companies want 20 year olds.

Edit: I'm 39, and I'm finally hitting my stride. I'm a far better programmer now than I was even 5 years ago.

[dimkar]

In some cultures 32 or even 35 is the age when a person is started to be considered mature. Why so much fuss about the age? 'Start when ready and don't procrastinate' is the moto I like.

[robomartin]

The only way your time will run out is if you give up. If you stop learning, advancing and pushing forward then, yes, time is up. Of course, what entrepreneurs get excited about changes with age. I've been starting and testing companies and ideas since I was probably 13 years old (selling custom t-shirts I made in my garage to classmates, for example). What got me excited back then doesn't even move the needle today.

Most of my ideas and entrepreneurial thoughts as I got older tended towards the more complex rather than the opposite. I never, in a million years, would have thought of Instagram. Not in my mental framework. In fact, I probably would have discounted it as a dumb idea. This is to say that there can be value in approaching entrepreneurship from ignorance (not meant as a pejorative). I would say that most of the things I've done that did well are things that, in retrospect, I jumped into with such utter ignorance of the reality of doing that thing that I probably would not have attempted it had I known. That's what I mean when I say that there's value in ignorance.

Now, a little bit about the programming business. Being a programmer is like being a supermodel. Once you reach a certain age, if there isn't something particularly special about you your career prospects can and often do change. In certain circles (SV being a good example) older programmers have a hard time finding work. It is a young man's world. I know many who moved out of the profession or relocated for this very reason. The issue of age discrimination has been discussed many times on HN. It is real. Keep that in mind as you go forward.

There's also another issue. Thirty years ago one could be an entrepreneur and, later in life, go get a job somewhere if needed. Today, things can be brutally different. With entrepreneurs generally plastering their lives all over the internet there is no dumbing-down your resume. No way. Which means that your life, your achievements and struggles will follow you forever. If, as you get older, for whatever reason, you decide you'd like to get off the entrepreneurial train and just get a job for a while it could be tough. People google your right away. In certain domains you'll run into FUD. Middle managers will not want to hire you because they are afraid you might be after their job (after all, you are very capable). Small to mid business owners will be afraid that you might want a job with them to learn about their business and later go off and launch a competing business. I did not realize this was going on until I had a chance conversation with a recruiter who was telling me about one of his customers who simply could not get hired to save his life due to his very public entrepreneurial profile. Obviously someone eventually hired him. Apparently it took a tremendous amount of work and time.

You are 35. Nothing to worry about so long as you don't stop learning. Just be smart about it all.