TechCrunch just trying to make news. To me the greatest part of the video was more stories about the antics of his friend Robert Morris.
Most on HN weren't even born yet when his worm took down a large part of the net but I well remember it;<). I hadn't heard the story on how he took an entire term off to relaunch Harvard on the Internet.
I read Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll around 1990 (it covers RTM's story of creating the "worm")... that book had such an effect on my life. Later, while in prison (during the startup boom of 1995-2000), I remember reading another article talking about how RTM had become a millionaire in the startup scene (presumably with Viaweb). That article, again, had a huge effect on my life after prison.
Robert Morris' case is an interesting one. While I'm unsure about whether the punishment handed out to him was deserving (It doesn't seem like he deliberately intended to cause so much damage, just to test his worm program) I am glad that the criminal justice system went after him despite him being a Ivy League Grad, with a father working at the NSA etc.
Not only was their first unicorn/public company started by college students (dropbox), arguably some of the largest companies of the recent era were started by college kids (facebook).
If that's the average, the only way it'd be "some, not most" would be if there were a bimodal distribution significant young portion and a significant older portion >35.
Well, if we assume that there are few successful founders, but enough people to skew the average age higher, then the oldest a few people to shift _that_ much could be are ~90. Since that is unlikely, it's likely that the median is close to the average.
This could be just a weird statistical bias. Founders start businesses at all ages, but the younger you start, the more tries you get before one of your businesses succeeds. And once your business is successful, then you're unlikely to start another.
This would make successful founders tend to be older than unsuccessful founders, but it's like always finding something in the last place that you look, or (happened to me) you're most likely to get injured on the last ski run of the day.
> And once your business is successful, then you're unlikely to start another.
Let me FTFY: once you start a successful business, it's unlikely that another you start will be nearly equally successful.
Most entrepreneurs are serial ones, and successful ones -- particularly those who leave their business behind (e.g. by acquisition) tend to try again. But contrary to popular belief, having a successful business in your past doesn't make it easier to make your new ventures successful -- it just makes it easier to start one.
It could be the case that over the entire portfolio of YC companies they've made money more consistently from more mature founders, and they're seeing fewer successes from young founders now. Dropbox and Facebook are more than ten years old.. What successes have YC had in the past 5 years?
I would also argue that the pains a social network or a cloud drive solve can be pretty well experienced by a college or younger kid. Many industry specific pains require industry specific experience.
Your forgetting that the college kids of them only had to know basic php and JavaScript to build a server + front end web UI. Now it’s at minimum 2 years to learn the deep fundamentals of react/redux/graphql then tying it into lambdas on the backend , maybe another year of study to learn full kubernetes integration , then another year to fully grasp how to set up and side chain in a deep learning pipeline with proper selection of production grade ML framework. Learn them all then choose which one works best. After that to reach youth in mobile sector , take 1.5 years to fully learn iOS and android native platform builds . Etc etc . It’s not that college kids are too young . It’s that they need to take the recommended time to learn and deploy all the necessary tech to launch a successful startup!
EDIT: this was a \s piece but obviously it went over some peoples heads lol
You can still start with plain old html, js, Ajax and a data store. Once, you reach some scale or in parallel, you can hire someone else to do it. There is a lot of open source tech now, which was not available before.
Now it’s at minimum 2 years to learn the deep fundamentals of react/redux/graphql then tying it into lambdas on the back end, maybe another year of study to learn full kubernetes integration , then another year to fully grasp how to set up and side chain in a deep learning pipeline with proper selection of production grade ML framework. Learn them all then choose which one works best. After that to reach youth in mobile sector, take 1.5 years to fully learn iOS and android native platform builds.
By which time the web crowd will have moved on to something else.
...even more floridly complex and requiring an even longer time to use well. I think we’ve already contracted the Average Hot Lifetime to less than the Effective Learning Period.
Startup companies need to understand their customers and solve a real and valuable problem. The tech stack is simply a means to that end. There are a vanishingly small number of customer problems that require years of tech proficiency across a wide range subjects to build a successful product.
Propagating nonsense about needing to have deep understanding in widely different fields (ML! DevOps! Frontend!) is not only patently wrong, it is needlessly discouraging.
For a "marketing" style startup you just need very basic tech. For a more "high-tech" startup - yes you will need a whole bunch of hard to master tech, although not necessarily the stuff you mentioned.
Drew and Arash were both 24 when DropBox was founded. Drew already had a couple years of work experience at the time (notably with Bit9, which is a security company that basically reverse-engineers ALL the things - see the connection with DropBox's early success?), and had founded one previous company, an SAT test prep business.
The article clearly stated that he wasn't speaking for YC. Nor was he talking about success rates. He was recommending that young people explore the world more before getting caught up in a single idea.
It's possible he's getting older and seeing college age youth as children more than before.
Also, there is a bit of a difference between a high school student, a college freshman or sophomore (<21) and someone graduating college (22,23). Small numbers, but there are different degrees of experience, maturity, and being just a little more past the "exploratory" phase.
Not really sure why all the downvotes... I understand he wasn't speaking on behalf of YC, but the man started YC. His opinions matter, and it appears to have changed from when he started YC, and it's an interesting thought to discuss.
Software is a commodity for complex or difficult industrial problems nowadays, so domain expertise is as relevant as coding abilities to sustain a profitable startup. Domain expertise cannot be acquired by chance and good scientists that have been trained for a long time become entrepreneurs later in their life, often after a stint in academy or corporation labs.
Why does it matter though. If they produce something good it’ll make money. Otherwise it’ll fail and they’ll go back doing something else. Whole thing is a nothing burger.
Perhaps there is a tendency for older people to value older people more highly than younger people, and conversely for younger people to devalue older people in favor of younger people.
As a famous young person once said "Young people are just smarter.".
It appears the message here from PG is that "Younger people have intellect but perhaps not the demonstrated tenacity and drive needed to succeed, and tenacity and drive trump intellect when it comes to entrepreneurialism.
Its natural to try to defend your group, and to think of oneself as somehow exceptional. So its easy to fall into justifying ideas and paradigms that lean towards those things.
>> a tendency for older people to value older people more highly than younger people
Actually now that I think about it this is wrong. Everyone tends to value young people more highly than older people - that's the way our society works. What can be said is that "older people tend to devalue older people less than younger people devalue older people".
Remaining an innocent beginner is important for people with experience.
Knowing there is stuff to learn is important for those who are beginners.
It's important to see this through a lens of having an appropriate amount of potential and experience/maturity/discipline rather than a function of age. Folks who spend more time behind keyboards than learning about the experiences of others leaves them at a disadvantage of finding problems to solve that matter to others.
Being young is an advantage in some ways, and not being young is an advantage in some ways.
The more well rounded you are, while you're younger, and are able to learn from others, the greater your chances to are succeed, earlier.
There is often (but not always) a need for young people to gather experience in problem-solving as experienced by others and discovering value.
You gotta remember, the folks in their 30+'s were 20 once too, just like anyone, living in the same world of the internet absolutely being gobsmacking in possibilities. That hasn't gone away or changed, we're on the same playing field.
Actually it was Mark Zuckerberg who said young people were just smarter. It was my generation (the boomers) who had the famous saying to never trust anyone over thirty. Each generation has a variant of the same mistake ;<).
The second study mentioned in the article, which is longitudinal rather than cross sectional, has more optimistic results for older ages, but as it says, there are problems with tracking the same people over time, such as them just getting better at IQ tests.
Regardless, the first, cross-sectional study gives clear answers to the current relation of age to intellectual ability.
Age shouldn't be a factor in hiring, only ability, but it's not unreasonable to say that, at least right now, you can expect people in their 20s to perform better at many tasks.
It's also hard not to just agree with the "young people are just smarter" statement based on intuition. When have you ever heard of a 20 year old needing help figuring out a television remote? Something clearly changed between the time that someone learned to drive a car and when they had to be shown for the 50th time how to upload a video from their camera to facebook.
Good grief. There are people - end of. I don't give a shit how old you are or your gender or your race, creed or colour. I don't care if you are "on" the autistic spectrum or fly a wheel chair or have to take someone else's socks off to count to 20.
Ageism? meh - that was a snag from before you kids were born.
I really think a distinction needs to be made b/w a reformed person and a convicted felon. All convicted felons are not necessarily reformed persons, and that distinction is very important.
eh, read to me like he was suggesting that young people try living their damn lives before shackling themselves to a business venture. you can always start a business venture, but you're pretty much only young and full of wonder once...
So, Paul Graham (PG) gives us anxiety about startups, fear, uncertainty, doubt, for young people getting stuck prematurely on a long track that might be a mistake and losing out on their youth, etc.
Okay, there are no doubt examples that support that.
But PG's focus is a bit narrow, something like YC graduate and VC funded $100 billion in 10 years or bust.
Here is a bigger picture that is really more accurate and optimistic:
First, we should consider a wider range of startups than "... $100 billion ...." We should note that the US is just awash in startups, from Aunt Martha's custom made wedding dresses and Joe's landscaping service to the full range of Main Street businesses in villages, towns, ..., the largest cities, border to border in the US, to much more. Some of these startups include Tom's ambitious Web site. Tom's older brother is half way through his ugrad electronics engineering degree and has taken a trip to China and lined up some manufacturing for a new pocket, wireless electronics item for some special purpose or other, uh, maybe letting Aunt Martha's customers send in good 3D specifications of their body shapes from some ultrasonic signals.
Lesson: There's a LOT of startup activity for all ages, both genders, all education levels, etc. in the US. Some of these, maybe not Aunt Martha's custom wedding dresses, maybe a young person's second startup if not their first, might be big surprises and become the $100 billion.
Second, PG is too narrow on the influences, inputs, information, inspiration, guidance, leadership, knowledge, experience, examples, etc. in practice available, and often important, for young people in business. As for dolphins, orcas, whales, wolves, big cats of Africa, ..., human children learn from their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, family members, friends, neighbors, etc. They might get to work in Uncle Harry's custom Web site development service or some of their father's 7 fast food restaurants, get started in wireless electronics from their grandfather, a senior engineer at Qualcomm, etc. -- maybe learn high school math by age 10, calculus at 11, vector analysis at 12, Maxwell's equations at 13 or some such and, then, do a wireless startup, with some help from Uncle Harry!
Lesson: For a lot of young people who want to start businesses, there are a LOT of information sources other than paying "full tuition" at the scary, solo school of hard knocks and high probability of failure in any of several respects that PG seems to paint.
If you write some software for a very popular Web site, no one else need know you were 60 years old, in a wheelchair, fired from IBM, and wearing sandals, sweat pants, and a Grateful Dead T-shirt. What matters is the Web site, the design, the code, pleasing users, running ads, getting revenue.
51 comments
[ 97.6 ms ] story [ 1575 ms ] threadMost on HN weren't even born yet when his worm took down a large part of the net but I well remember it;<). I hadn't heard the story on how he took an entire term off to relaunch Harvard on the Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_worm
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
This would make successful founders tend to be older than unsuccessful founders, but it's like always finding something in the last place that you look, or (happened to me) you're most likely to get injured on the last ski run of the day.
Let me FTFY: once you start a successful business, it's unlikely that another you start will be nearly equally successful.
Most entrepreneurs are serial ones, and successful ones -- particularly those who leave their business behind (e.g. by acquisition) tend to try again. But contrary to popular belief, having a successful business in your past doesn't make it easier to make your new ventures successful -- it just makes it easier to start one.
EDIT: this was a \s piece but obviously it went over some peoples heads lol
By which time the web crowd will have moved on to something else.
Propagating nonsense about needing to have deep understanding in widely different fields (ML! DevOps! Frontend!) is not only patently wrong, it is needlessly discouraging.
Also, there is a bit of a difference between a high school student, a college freshman or sophomore (<21) and someone graduating college (22,23). Small numbers, but there are different degrees of experience, maturity, and being just a little more past the "exploratory" phase.
As a famous young person once said "Young people are just smarter.".
It appears the message here from PG is that "Younger people have intellect but perhaps not the demonstrated tenacity and drive needed to succeed, and tenacity and drive trump intellect when it comes to entrepreneurialism.
Actually now that I think about it this is wrong. Everyone tends to value young people more highly than older people - that's the way our society works. What can be said is that "older people tend to devalue older people less than younger people devalue older people".
Knowing there is stuff to learn is important for those who are beginners.
It's important to see this through a lens of having an appropriate amount of potential and experience/maturity/discipline rather than a function of age. Folks who spend more time behind keyboards than learning about the experiences of others leaves them at a disadvantage of finding problems to solve that matter to others.
Being young is an advantage in some ways, and not being young is an advantage in some ways.
The more well rounded you are, while you're younger, and are able to learn from others, the greater your chances to are succeed, earlier.
There is often (but not always) a need for young people to gather experience in problem-solving as experienced by others and discovering value.
You gotta remember, the folks in their 30+'s were 20 once too, just like anyone, living in the same world of the internet absolutely being gobsmacking in possibilities. That hasn't gone away or changed, we're on the same playing field.
The second study mentioned in the article, which is longitudinal rather than cross sectional, has more optimistic results for older ages, but as it says, there are problems with tracking the same people over time, such as them just getting better at IQ tests.
Regardless, the first, cross-sectional study gives clear answers to the current relation of age to intellectual ability.
Age shouldn't be a factor in hiring, only ability, but it's not unreasonable to say that, at least right now, you can expect people in their 20s to perform better at many tasks.
It's also hard not to just agree with the "young people are just smarter" statement based on intuition. When have you ever heard of a 20 year old needing help figuring out a television remote? Something clearly changed between the time that someone learned to drive a car and when they had to be shown for the 50th time how to upload a video from their camera to facebook.
Ageism? meh - that was a snag from before you kids were born.
Disclosure: convicted felon here
Okay, there are no doubt examples that support that.
But PG's focus is a bit narrow, something like YC graduate and VC funded $100 billion in 10 years or bust.
Here is a bigger picture that is really more accurate and optimistic:
First, we should consider a wider range of startups than "... $100 billion ...." We should note that the US is just awash in startups, from Aunt Martha's custom made wedding dresses and Joe's landscaping service to the full range of Main Street businesses in villages, towns, ..., the largest cities, border to border in the US, to much more. Some of these startups include Tom's ambitious Web site. Tom's older brother is half way through his ugrad electronics engineering degree and has taken a trip to China and lined up some manufacturing for a new pocket, wireless electronics item for some special purpose or other, uh, maybe letting Aunt Martha's customers send in good 3D specifications of their body shapes from some ultrasonic signals.
Lesson: There's a LOT of startup activity for all ages, both genders, all education levels, etc. in the US. Some of these, maybe not Aunt Martha's custom wedding dresses, maybe a young person's second startup if not their first, might be big surprises and become the $100 billion.
Second, PG is too narrow on the influences, inputs, information, inspiration, guidance, leadership, knowledge, experience, examples, etc. in practice available, and often important, for young people in business. As for dolphins, orcas, whales, wolves, big cats of Africa, ..., human children learn from their parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, family members, friends, neighbors, etc. They might get to work in Uncle Harry's custom Web site development service or some of their father's 7 fast food restaurants, get started in wireless electronics from their grandfather, a senior engineer at Qualcomm, etc. -- maybe learn high school math by age 10, calculus at 11, vector analysis at 12, Maxwell's equations at 13 or some such and, then, do a wireless startup, with some help from Uncle Harry!
Lesson: For a lot of young people who want to start businesses, there are a LOT of information sources other than paying "full tuition" at the scary, solo school of hard knocks and high probability of failure in any of several respects that PG seems to paint.