For what it's worth, I'm a 20-something working in the industry while my peers are off starting start-ups.<p>I agree with the article, at least as far as technical knowledge goes. Some friends of mine who I graduated with are starting an Instagram for music app called Cymbal in Brooklyn, and I talk to them somewhat frequently about what's going on tech-wise. They're seed-funded and have runway for the next while, and have produced a really quality app. Whether or not they'll succeed, I don't know, but I know the quality of their work isn't in question.<p>My takeaway from conversations with their back-end engineer is that he's getting a lot of experience building an infrastructure from the group up that's taking a lot of traffic, learning what to do and what not to do by things failing. He's developing the "right way to do things". By contrast, my time at Twitter as a backend/fullstack engineer has taught me a lot about what that infrastructure looks like when it's mature, and I've learned the Twitter-approved "right way to do things". We're both learning what scalable robust infrastructure looks like, but while he gets the benefit of familiarity with every part of the stack and learning first hand what works and why, I get a huge jump in general knowledge with less details.<p>Which is arguably better? We'll only know for certain when I start my own startup in a few years, but my gut feeling is that the skills I'm gaining here by perusing scaled-up systems that face hundred of millions of requests every day will serve me more. I've learned so much about good ways to build things in just my past few months that have already radically changed how I face my own personal projects, that I can't imagine sticking with code I wrote before I had this knowledge.<p>I know the article is more about industry experience as applied to creating a network of peers and the business side of things, but I'm confident it extends to the technical side as well.<p>Thoughts?
20-somethings start companies which serve 20-something customers (Facebook, Snapchat, etc).<p>30-somethings start companies which serve 30-something customers, or enterprise customers of the type they've worked at (where purchasing decisions are made by 30-something directors).<p>There are exceptions to those rules, but they're pretty consistent.<p>What's important is that entrepreneurs be consistently visible across age/race/gender/class/origin/etc demographics, so all markets are best served.
Knowing how to play the hand you are delt is important. If you are young play to those strengths if older play to those. I find you can succeed at any age, but I do find with age certain experiences etc can come into play that you just didnt have earlier.<p>I find I am better at almost every area of business than I was 10 years ago for a number of reasons.<p>Learn and put what you learned to use, doesnt matter if you are young or old.
>>we found that the typical successful founder was 40 years old, with at least 6-10 years of industry experience<p>being a successful gounder requires many good years to get there. I recall seeing a number as large as 7-10 years. Combine that with the 6-10 years of industry experience, which most likely includes previous failed startups, it means they started in at least their mid-20s.<p>What I take away from this is - start the starting of your company early (20s) and if you keep at it, you'll be successful by the time you're 40.
I don't assign any value to age honestly. I've been surprised by old and young alike. We all age differently and aptitude isn't age-restricted.
<i>Do</i> turn your adblocker on for that site. I had at some point turned it off to be nice to them - but what I got this time was too much for me. Flashing everywhere, a third of my browser window for ads, and then an ad popup floating across the text that I had to manually click to close.