HN Explorer

Ideal age of a founder is irrelevant, why all the talk about it?

1 points by bgtony ↗ HN
The lurker awakes! Young or a bit older? How does it matter? Age as a primary attribute of a founder (either younger or older) cannot make up for the lack of other necessary attributes - a complete list of which I cannot include here because I frankly don’t know. But, like porn, I know it when I see it – and I think we all do.

Each age range has its merits. So therefore wouldn’t it be wise, if one is youthful, to seek an older co-founder - or if one is older, to seek a youthful co-founder if only to mitigate any negative attributes of either age “bracket” through a diversification of possible viewpoints? Wouldn’t this make a startup stronger?

How can any other opinion on this matter avoid age driven over-generalization and bias?

If the youth prefer the youth, the aged prefer the aged – don’t both lose out?

3 comments

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ambition
Age is useful as a cheap early heuristic because it correlates with lots of other useful information.

I don't think the typical differences between young and old are actually complementary. Older people have some potential advantages in experience, younger have advantages in risk tolerance.

bkovitz
When I was a kid, I had friends of all ages: other kids, young adults, older adults. As an adult, I have friends who are much younger than me, about the same age, and older: currently teenage to mid-60s. Age is just not an issue.

Geeks are a different sort of person. We don't care about your ethnic group, your age, how popular you are, or even (much) about your gender. Whatever, all we care about is beautiful design and deep ideas. We instantly recognize others who think this way, and we stay this way our whole lives. Maybe it's neoteny.

baha_man
You talk about age being irrelevant, and then suggest that people of different ages will necessarily have different viewpoints - isn't this a little contradictory?