Has there been any stats on the funding rates of applicants by age?
It could be that there are more young people applying for funding in general, causing this skew.
I think that this is probably right. There's some ageism in Silicon Valley, but probably not as much as the VCs are accused of (even if I like to bash the chickenhawks who fund talentless young zeroes like Lucas Duplan and Evan Spiegel). A lot of it, I'd imagine, is self-selection. At age 50, people who have their shit together don't want to deal with the humiliation of participating preferred, obscenely long deliberation periods before a funding decision, and investors who'll readily funnel your ideas (and your best people) to a competitor if they change their mind on you. They have other options, whereas the 23-year-olds often don't.
In fact, that's one of the less-often-said (because, applied to individuals, it's still bigoted and obnoxious) matters in Silicon Valley. There is an adverse selection when it comes to age. Talented older people tend to have enough experience not to take the typical Silicon Valley deal (especially for startup employees) so what's left is a set of people who may be old or talented but aren't both (and, of course, most are neither, i.e. young and talentless).
Most of the really good, 50+ programmers that I know either want to do real technology (not Snapchat bullshit) or have moved into finance. In fact, in those domains, you find that the older programmers are often the best ones by far. Some of the very good older programmers will look for funding, but they're more likely to go into consulting and bootstrap than deal with the 6-month job interview and aggressive (and typically illegal, in terms of what things are discussed) back-channel reference checking that seems to come with the VC territory.
In fact, that's one of the less-often-said (because, applied to individuals, it's still bigoted and obnoxious) matters in Silicon Valley. There is an adverse selection when it comes to age. Talented older people tend to have enough experience not to take the typical Silicon Valley deal (especially for startup employees) so what's left is a set of people who may be old or talented but aren't both (and, of course, most are neither, i.e. young and talentless).
Most of the really good, 50+ programmers that I know either want to do real technology (not Snapchat bullshit) or have moved into finance. In fact, in those domains, you find that the older programmers are often the best ones by far. Some of the very good older programmers will look for funding, but they're more likely to go into consulting and bootstrap than deal with the 6-month job interview and aggressive (and typically illegal, in terms of what things are discussed) back-channel reference checking that seems to come with the VC territory.