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Older entrepreneurs are much less willing to sacrifice their health for the change of making someone else rich. They’re generally harder to push around and intimidate too, making them much less attractive targets for investment.
The point _you responded to_ is saying that silicon valley investment favors youth because they can get better ROI by working younger folks harder and extracting better terms. They're saying older folks are harder to do that to, and you're saying "that sounds good" without specifying who you think it's good for.
It's good _for entrepreneurs_ to have more work life balance, not get burned out, and capture more return for their hard work. It's good _for investors_ to get max returns from their investments. There's a set of parameters to maximize returns for both parties.
You don't clarify what you mean by "a good thing."
The grandfather comment was making an observation, not asserting something as being good or bad. The child comment didn't add value because it was unclear.
This description of someone with some experience might be less attractive to VC's who want to take a decade from a 20 year old, but probably more attractive for an investor who wants to add more value than just money alone.
A reality is, experience generally pays and leverages.
On one hand, being inexperienced leads to a great deal of openmindedness, which despite being exciting as hell, can fall prey to chasing shiny objects and not being able to think big enough or see big enough to stick with something for a few years.
Take the small group of new entrepreneurs who launch, and many inevitably get forced out by having growth CEO's come in. What if they leveled up so VC's couldn't replace them as as easily?
Experience who doesn't become close minded, jaded, or burnt out in their 20's after chasing VC's as paying customers instead of customers as customers.
I've long felt there needs to be better mentorship for folks starting out, and those just a jump or two ahead of them (and a jump or two ahead of them).
Investors aren't looking for founders who are easy to intimidate and push around. They're looking for founders who will succeed, and someone who is easy to push around is not likely to.
This just in: People who have some experience doing things in general tend to be better at doing those things.
In my experience of working at startups they are generally too focused on "disruption" and tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes existing industries do things for valid reasons that you just don't understand yet and you need to in order to change them. Instead the community looks up to those fortunate (often just lucky) enough to be successful and tries to derive a signal about why they succeeded in the first place that doesn't really exist.
Experience in business or an industry gives you understanding of things it might take years to learn and helps you avoid making simple mistakes that can ruin your company.
This is just semantic confusion. A local restaurant is not a highly scaleable technology company. They're both "new businesses" but radically different in every other way. It's an apples and oranges comparison.
One good definition of a Silicon Valley "startup" is Paul Graham's:
"A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth."
Overall, I agree with the premise (seeing all the silly mistakes the younger folks - including myself earlier in life - do), but it also differs by area.
"Hip" stuff, B2C, is an area where the younger folks may fare better because they know the segment of the market which is willing to spend more (namely, other younger folks).
On the other hand, B2B requires an extensive network of connections, knowing the corporate bureaucracy, and a lot of patience. It's very unlikely under-30s will have advantage here.
All in all, us old farts are less likely to play by the VCs' destructive narrative of "all or nothing" and aim at the more realistic "much or something". Seriously aiming to be a Facebook or a Google is like including a lottery win in your budget.
And, of course, bullshit radars honed by experience never get obsolete.
I believe this is true for businesses in general, but that doesn't mean it's true for startups. Startups are a tiny proportion of businesses, and things work very differently in that world.
Exactly how and why they work differently is a fascinating (and very useful) topic. And yet instead of exploring that interesting topic, reporter after reporter goes for the easy debunk-the-young-hotshot-myth article, using an argument based on conflating startups with businesses in general.
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For even better results use a text-only browser for reading the news. AMP pages look great in a text-only browser. No ads.I go to http://archive.is/, put in the paywalled URL, and get a link like that one back. It usually works.
The point _you responded to_ is saying that silicon valley investment favors youth because they can get better ROI by working younger folks harder and extracting better terms. They're saying older folks are harder to do that to, and you're saying "that sounds good" without specifying who you think it's good for.
It's good _for entrepreneurs_ to have more work life balance, not get burned out, and capture more return for their hard work. It's good _for investors_ to get max returns from their investments. There's a set of parameters to maximize returns for both parties.
You don't clarify what you mean by "a good thing."
To be fair to the grandfather comment, that was the point.
I'd like to paraphrase it. "The child comment was unclear so it doesn't appear to add value."
A reality is, experience generally pays and leverages.
On one hand, being inexperienced leads to a great deal of openmindedness, which despite being exciting as hell, can fall prey to chasing shiny objects and not being able to think big enough or see big enough to stick with something for a few years.
Take the small group of new entrepreneurs who launch, and many inevitably get forced out by having growth CEO's come in. What if they leveled up so VC's couldn't replace them as as easily?
Experience who doesn't become close minded, jaded, or burnt out in their 20's after chasing VC's as paying customers instead of customers as customers.
I've long felt there needs to be better mentorship for folks starting out, and those just a jump or two ahead of them (and a jump or two ahead of them).
In my experience of working at startups they are generally too focused on "disruption" and tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sometimes existing industries do things for valid reasons that you just don't understand yet and you need to in order to change them. Instead the community looks up to those fortunate (often just lucky) enough to be successful and tries to derive a signal about why they succeeded in the first place that doesn't really exist.
Experience in business or an industry gives you understanding of things it might take years to learn and helps you avoid making simple mistakes that can ruin your company.
One good definition of a Silicon Valley "startup" is Paul Graham's:
"A startup is a company designed to grow fast. Being newly founded does not in itself make a company a startup. Nor is it necessary for a startup to work on technology, or take venture funding, or have some sort of "exit." The only essential thing is growth. Everything else we associate with startups follows from growth."
http://paulgraham.com/growth.html
"Hip" stuff, B2C, is an area where the younger folks may fare better because they know the segment of the market which is willing to spend more (namely, other younger folks).
On the other hand, B2B requires an extensive network of connections, knowing the corporate bureaucracy, and a lot of patience. It's very unlikely under-30s will have advantage here.
All in all, us old farts are less likely to play by the VCs' destructive narrative of "all or nothing" and aim at the more realistic "much or something". Seriously aiming to be a Facebook or a Google is like including a lottery win in your budget.
And, of course, bullshit radars honed by experience never get obsolete.
Exactly how and why they work differently is a fascinating (and very useful) topic. And yet instead of exploring that interesting topic, reporter after reporter goes for the easy debunk-the-young-hotshot-myth article, using an argument based on conflating startups with businesses in general.