[seanmcdirmid]

If you have a family, obligations, the amount of risk you can take on might be more limited. It's ok taking equity in leui of a decent salary in your 20's when single, but this is much harder when life goals change after having a kid.

[USNetizen]

Well, that is another stereotype. When you're older and have held more high-paying jobs, you also tend to have savings, assets, a better credit history and other funds to cushion the blow. Plus, with a spouse, you have economies of scale potentially so they can work while you lead a startup with little or no pay.

I would guarantee if you took a survey, that the average founder actually falls somewhere around 38-45 years old, with one to two kids, a mortgage and everything else. Yet, the risk is substantially lower because they can leverage up to 20 years of earned experience (and contacts) in an industry (or multiple).

If you don't believe me, just ask the guys that started Intel, who were in their 40's with families. They even did it in a time when technology startups were virtually unheard of.

[seanmcdirmid]

I was referring to working for a startup than founding one. I think you are right about founding, that many founders will be older necessarily. And in that case, you at least have controls of the risks and are chasing your vision, not someone else's. But working for a startup at 40 seems problematic, since you aren't really taking risks as an entrepreneur.

[USNetizen]

I don't believe the original post was about working at a startup, it was more regarding founding one. Hence my answers to that effect.

I don't see the difference though. Netscape was co-founded by a 20-something Marc Andreessen, but run day-to-day by a couple 40-and-50-somethings in the early days, not including the developers, many of which were well into their 30's.

Like I said, the 20-something startup kid - either worker or founder - is a stereotype and not accurate. I can keep coming up with more examples if you want. There are dozens of them for every one 20-something wunderkind example.

Heck, looking back now that I'm in my 30's, I marvel at the ignorance I had in my 20's that could have easily led me to ruining a startup. Experience is simply irreplaceable and more valuable than youth in business, regardless of what you've been told.

Now that I'm a little older, I have a successful company which I could simply not have achieved without millions of dollars in investment at a younger age. That investment would have all gone to keeping me afloat while I made mistakes due to the naivete of my 20's. Contrarily, working in industry for a little while first, I learned from other successful companies and leveraged the good things while jettisoning the bad things I saw.

[vidarh]

There was a period after my son was born where I definitively wouldn't have tried another startup, but that too changes quickly (he's 6 now)

And while, yes, I can't gamble my income as I could before, I've never gone more than 1 month without income despite having been through more than half a dozen startups, and I've never had to trade a decent salary to get equity other than at my first startup (at 19; we were all clueless of business and hopelessly underfunded - we started an ISP with about $50k and lived on our student loans for the first year).

Maybe I've just been lucky, but fear of losing my salary just does not factor in to me. Nor does the idea of having to sacrifice salary. When joining my last startup, I took 7.5% in options coupled with a salary offer 20% above my previous job, with the only sacrifice being that I put in evenings and some weekend work for "free" for a few months before our A round closed.

Incidentally the founders of the last startup I mentioned above were both older, one of them had three young children, and a wife who worked part time on another startup.

Many at my age have reached the level of financial stability where setting aside enough savings to be secure for a year or two of uncertain income is easy enough to even make bootstrapping less stressful if I were to opt for that.

The biggest change for me is that my priorities have changed. I'm not so interested in chasing after the billion dollar exit, as I've come to realise how little money matters to my happiness, and that will change how/when/what I do next time I start a company or join another startup.

[rgrieselhuber]

This largely depends on if your spouse prefers security and predictability over risk and adventure, as well as your ability to persuade them towards the latter.

[rayiner]

Single people have to feed and house themselves--married people can often lean on their spouse. My former boss started the company in his late 30's, after working in industry and having three kids. His wife paid the bills, allowing him to bootstrap without having to seek outside investment.