from Hacker News

How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?

by jensv on 6/27/18, 5:34 AM with 58 comments

  • by denzil_correa on 6/27/18, 12:32 PM

  • by computerphage on 6/27/18, 5:50 AM

    Link to the paper: https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/jones-ben/htm/A...

    The abstract: Many observers, and many investors, believe that young people are especially likely to produce the most successful new firms. We use administrative data at the U.S. Census Bureau to study the ages of founders of growth-oriented start-ups in the past decade. Our primary finding is that successful entrepreneurs are middle-aged, not young. The mean founder age for the 1 in 1,000 fastest growing new ventures is 45.0. The findings are broadly similar when considering high-technology sectors, entrepreneurial hubs, and successful firm exits. Prior experience in the specific industry predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success. These findings strongly reject common hypotheses that emphasize youth as a key trait of successful entrepreneurs.

  • by jath on 6/27/18, 7:54 AM

    I presume one reason could be at 40 you dont make the mistakes you made at 20. I was 20 once and when i built a product i tried to load it with features/options. Now at 30 i make things as simple as possible. I don’t discuss which DB to use. I straight away use SQL. I don’t discuss scaling issues. I dont bother about 80% of the issues i used to discuss when i was 20. I’m better of now.

  • by 1ba9115454 on 6/27/18, 7:10 AM

    The article talks of old and the young as if they were different people. All of the old people were young people once.

    If you consistently try to build businesses through side projects, or other means, there's a good chance you're getting better at it as the years go by.

    So it shouldn't come as a surprise to find you may eventually succeed.

  • by madaxe_again on 6/27/18, 5:54 AM

    You spend half your career being told that you are too young by prospective clients and investors (I was rather astounded when we were turned down on this ground at first, rather than anything to do with the product or service, but eventually grew to accept it), and then the next half being told you are too old by the same.

    Ah, to be forever 34 and eight months.

  • by bitL on 6/27/18, 9:05 AM

    Could this be a result of wide-spread ageism? People >40 are basically forced to be entrepreneurial and can't afford to waste time on unimportant stuff like they did in their 20s.

  • by DataDisciple on 6/27/18, 6:01 PM

    After parsing the comments, I have not seen one person mention management or leadership. Someone with 20 years experience hiring and leading teams is going to be much better than someone doing it for the first time in their life. The ability to know your weaknesses, surround yourself with good people who fit your vision/culture and address those weaknesses, is not something most 25 year olds can do. Most at 25 have no idea what their weaknesses are. which makes it all the more impressive when people like Zuck, Spiegel can scale into massive companies.

    But I also understand why you would want to invest in a 20-something. On average, they are going to be more aware of emerging tech, and guided with the right advisors can get a company off the ground and then supported with the necessary pieces.

  • by amelius on 6/27/18, 12:22 PM

    Can we make a distinction based on:

    - High-tech/low-tech. It makes a difference if the entrepreneur simply glued together existing technologies, or invented a new technology.

    - The amount of investment money.

    - The amount of failed companies of the entrepreneur.

  • by andrewn32 on 6/27/18, 1:18 PM

    Industry expertise and decades understanding how others solve problems in your field, larger network, etc. make a successful outcome much more likely.

  • by harrydry on 6/27/18, 10:28 AM

    How are people believing this shit. Complete BS.

    There's several independent variables (money / trial and error / twitter following / coding ability etc ...)

    this clickbait paper makes it sound like age is the independent variable. when age is merely CORRELATED with these independent variables. Age itself is of little importance.

    You may as well say:

    "A person who has already started 5 startups is 4.9X more likely to found a successful startup than a person has never founded a startup before"

    Google "Multicollinearity" before you vend BS clickbait.