This part is a little too ambiguous:<p>> <i>I wanted to know why he can pull that off and I can’t. He’s 42; I’m 29. I asked what changed for him in the last 12 years. Was he always this good?...The first thing he said was this: Yeah, I was always this good. So were my cofounders...[but] I was also doing lots of stuff I wasn’t good at. The only thing I changed in the last 12 years is that I stopped doing those bits."</i><p>I think it's possible to think that part of being "good" is knowing "good" from "bad", or, "wisdom" as others might put it. I don't think it's necessary to think of "being good" as different from "being experienced"...as the two qualities are so tightly co-dependent in something like programming/designing/business-building.<p>It's an important distinction to make because I don't think we have to attribute the success of young hacker/entrepreneurs to plain raw talent. Did Facebook become the biggest network because Zuckerberg was the best PHP developer in all of Harvard? I think the young people who hit it big do so because they're in a phase of life when trying big risky new things is <i>encouraged</i>, and these provide opportunities and insights that are less available to a middle-aged person of the same raw talent.<p>So, if you believe in karma and a purposeful universe, there's a nice balance here...young creators have growing/hungry minds and fewer shackles...older creators have more wisdom...and so there's a great number of avenues to success for young and old.<p>(I'm leaving out luck/connections/privilege in this discussion, but they are obviously factors for young and old)