7 ms·

What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but

What is the parallel advice for a 40 year old? I guess the programming and tinkering stuff still applies. But university cannot be redone. Sure I can study but I wont have any connection to most young people. I’ll be the old guy. And this assumes I can afford the loss of income. I assume a lot of start ups are started by older people too. I think for older people an advantage is to solve older people problems. Like how sucky accessing all kinds of “adulting” things are from aged care to dealing with myriad systems with kids schools or any other problems that have inevitably been chucked at you. Some of these “startups” might actually be lobbying/political work for the good that doesn’t make money, some might be startups. Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn. I see that as an odd goal for a founder of any age but a great goal for an investor.

xyzelement 2y ago
// Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn You can use that term as a proxy for delivering large impact to the world. It's approximately the same thing. If you do something like "aged care" and "dealing with kids schools" in a way that helps millions of people, you'll end up a billionaire whether you want to or not. I don't use the term "unicorn" but I think keeping score in financial terms helps because that's how you know you've delivered something people want and at scale. If you remove money out of the equation it's easier to fool yourself thinking you're making some difference and you're not.
- waveBidder 2y ago
  But unicorns and the people who fund them are all about disconnecting from actual returns today, and caring about projected returns in 10 years. Accidentally becoming very popular is great. Aiming for that as the goal distorts the business into something unsustainable and inevitably leads to enshittification.
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  But perhaps he doesn't want to make THAT much impact. Some decent impact would be fine, of course. It seems a lot of responsibility to have impact on millions of people, might lead you down the road of drugs and alcohol, killing your health to be able to handle it. If I have a business that impacts millions of people, then every hour I spend on it, would have huge influence, and if I don't spend the hours on increasing that percentage, I'm also letting down millions of people.
- dtnewman 2y ago
  Counterpoint: Rudolph Hass, creator of the original hass avocado, barely made anything from it. I’m not gonna say that the Hass Avocado had more impact than Apple or Google, but it’s definitely more impactful than any $1-10 billion company I can think of.
  - teaearlgraycold 2y ago
    Isn’t the story that some crazy old seed man gave him a Hass seed and we don’t really know where it came from?
    - b112 2y ago
      Such a Californian, colloquial tale. I'd had never seen an avocado in any grocery story growing up, never tasted it until I visited California. Is this "changing the world"? Well I suppose it could be, after all myriads of people have never used or even heard of slack.
- codethatwerks 2y ago
  You can fool yourself with money too. Often it is more profitable to do the unethical thing.
emseetech 2y ago
Less startup, more starting a business. The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I
- Solvency 2y ago
  That's a romantic idea until you realize you're now dealing and subservient to the dredges of society, the worst kinds of customers, the worst kind of people. Far worse than a niche market specialized technology sales prospect. Get ready to have a new contempt for humanity. Get ready to be raked over the coals by Yelp.
  - sandspar 2y ago
    Lol hell yeah brother my local coffee shop regulars are well known for being the dredges of society.
    - codethatwerks 2y ago
      Coffee shop? Customers fine, but health inspectors and rent increases are your antihero. As well as too much competition.
  - boringg 2y ago
    Man you gotta get outside more often. Most of the world doesn't work in tech and has for thousands of years and surprise doesn't suffer from a new level of contempt for their fellow human.
  - gnicholas 2y ago
    GP didn’t actually mention what kind of business (B2B or B2C, tech or another sector) — the description was broad enough to encompass my IP licensing business, which is about as tech-focused as it gets.
xhrpost 2y ago
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
- jh00ker 2y ago
  "Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45" The link above links to the article I was going to post. Just adding the headline here, since it was missing.
- garyiskidding 2y ago
  Thanks, this is the link I've been looking for with regards to this thread.
- halienm 2y ago
  H
happytiger 2y ago
Wow, the older I get the more ambitious I get about what to build. A lot of the companies I created in my 20s and 30s I wouldn’t waste my time on in my 40s. I’m so the exact opposite it’s kinda funny. Go big or go home, it’s no fun to chew bones.
- kamaal 2y ago
  That Steve Jobs advice of saying no to a lot of things seems such a natural thing to do as you age. As years that remain shrink, you have to pick and choose the battles you want to fight.
  - happytiger 2y ago
    That’s interesting. Aging hasn’t been limiting my thinking about time remaining. Maybe it should. It’s been pouring on the gas about enjoying the ride as much as possible instead. Worry less, lean in more, focus on defining a success that is yours in a way that’s deeply meaningful.
llm_trw 2y ago
>Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn. I see that as an odd goal for a founder of any age but a great goal for an investor. Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside. Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now. Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value. There's a reason why every shop which supports massive open source projects is running away from legacy licenses as fast as they can and that reason is Amazon. If you don't care about developers from the user side of things it's just as bad. The GPL in the age of cloud services does as much to protect user freedom as the MIT license did in the 1990s.
- ramraj07 2y ago
  Creating something from scratch is so much easier today than it ever was, and I’ve been creating crap for decades now. All the fancy JavaScript crap is purely optional. You can still write something in CGI if you want. My last prototype I wrote with Vue and JQuery and as pure html and .js files. It was an absolute blast! And the users loved it! Have you tested streamlit? FastAPI? Everything is so easy now.
  - llm_trw 2y ago
    Today if I were to write a cgi script it would have to send json payloads to the JS front end because round trip latency on phones is between 100 to 500ms to hit a dns server. I was getting lower latency on dialup in 1996. On my desktop it's 2ms on a bad day. You can't just use HTML because browsers have mutated to fat clients for a X like protocol which is a mishmash of html, css, js, and whatever else someone's decided to throw on top of it. We're using screwdrivers as axes and everyone is acting like this is some type of acceptable outcome.
    - nicoburns 2y ago
      You absolutely can just use HTML. You're writing this on HN that just uses HTML and is one of the more responsive websites on mobile connections. You can't make as rich an interavtive experience as you can with JS, but you never could.
throwoutway 2y ago
Give yourself a break. When I studied in uni I was stuck at tables with 'old guys' and 'old ladies' and I had a lot of respect for them. They paid attention, wanted to learn, were there to learn. When I didn't understand something, I asked them before I asked the teacher and they generally were happy to help. I have fond memories
tomhoward 2y ago
There's a study that often gets shared around, purportedly "Debunking the Myth of the Young Entrepreneur", showing data that most successful startup founders start their companies in their mid-to-late 40s, including tech/social media companies. It depends a lot on how you qualify and categorise founders, companies and "successful", but of course you can understand why it can be somewhat truthful: people in their 40s have had 2-3 decades to build up experience, networks and a track record, making it much easier to build a team and attract investors and initial customers. I'm sure almost all of these founders in their 40s have had at least some partial success in their past. So it still affirms that it's best to start as young as possible, allowing time to experiment with ideas, markets, co-founders, etc. I've seen plenty of founders bounce from one-to-another-to-another startup from their 20s to their 40s, each one being vastly more successful than the last. But as you point out there are still all kinds of opportunities to build new products to address needs that are overlooked by younger founders, so you should absolutely go for it if you're inspired. I feel the same as you about being less interested in "unicorn"-scale success after 40; as you mature, have kids, experience illness in your family and become more observant of problems in different segments of society, you become much more focused on just providing well for your family and doing some good for the world than having to be some kind of all-conquering hero. If you want to connect privately to talk more about what kind of company you want to build and how best to go about it, feel free to get in touch (email in bio).
- luc4sdreyer 2y ago
  > "Debunking the Myth of the Young Entrepreneur" There might be others, but this one is clear and to the point: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...
mynameisnoone 2y ago
Same boat here. I would suggest using your network and consider a path of least resistance such as building a side-business while working that either solves niche enterprise problems or makes enterprise capabilities more manageable for small businesses. Starting a business is really easy. The bullshit that every business needs to do isn't particularly magical or mysterious. Don't get too invested in the bureaucratization process, but also be sure to implement what needs to happen just in time. Find cofounders from your friends and coworkers, and go to startup events. Find people who you respect and who respect you, have integrity, and are the most fun. It's important to find people who don't turn into arrogant SOBs or raging sociopaths when large sums of money become involved. Honesty, awareness, navigating/prioritizing ambiguity, and conflict resolution skills are damn important. Avoid external funding if at all possible unless it unblocks time-to-market that would otherwise miss market time or grow too slowly to survive. (Growing slower is often easier and more sustainable!) Have sensible cost controls that are pennywise and poundwise. If not changing the world or building a startup per se, focus on building a business that something people want. ;@] Expect it to take 20x longer, 50x more effort, and 4x more money than you think.
idkdotcom 2y ago
[dead]
eggdaft 2y ago
Sounds like you might want to start a lifestyle business. You should read and listen to everything by Rob Walling, especially his “stair step approach”. Wish someone had told me this at your stage. For meeting founders, find someone in the area you’re interested in and build stuff with them. Also consider using the YC founder network, but they may be too ambitious for you. Lifestyle businesses are probably less dependent on cofounders for success. You’ll need to work hard at your tech skills if they’ve atrophied. The good news is, this part is incredibly fun.
- rwalling 2y ago
  Here are a couple links if you want to get started with my work, all focused on bootstrapping profitable SaaS companies: [Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping] https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-bootstrapping/ https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b... [Podcast] https://startupsfortherestofus.com https://startupsfortherestofus.com [Book] https://saasplaybook.com https://saasplaybook.com [YouTube] https://microconf.com/youtube https://microconf.com/youtube
  - atentaten 2y ago
    Anything on B2C?
  - eggdaft 2y ago
    Classic Hacker News moment. Thanks Rob, love everything you do! Your recent SaaS Playbook is awesome.
navane 2y ago
I think PG addresses this subtlety where he says: "when you're young it's easier to know what you are interested in, than what people need." This inverts as you get older.

xyzelement 2y ago

// Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn You can use that term as a proxy for delivering large impact to the world. It's approximately the same thing. If you do something like "aged care" and "dealing with kids schools" in a way that helps millions of people, you'll end up a billionaire whether you want to or not. I don't use the term "unicorn" but I think keeping score in financial terms helps because that's how you know you've delivered something people want and at scale. If you remove money out of the equation it's easier to fool yourself thinking you're making some difference and you're not.

waveBidder 2y ago
But unicorns and the people who fund them are all about disconnecting from actual returns today, and caring about projected returns in 10 years. Accidentally becoming very popular is great. Aiming for that as the goal distorts the business into something unsustainable and inevitably leads to enshittification.
mewpmewp2 2y ago
But perhaps he doesn't want to make THAT much impact. Some decent impact would be fine, of course. It seems a lot of responsibility to have impact on millions of people, might lead you down the road of drugs and alcohol, killing your health to be able to handle it. If I have a business that impacts millions of people, then every hour I spend on it, would have huge influence, and if I don't spend the hours on increasing that percentage, I'm also letting down millions of people.
dtnewman 2y ago
Counterpoint: Rudolph Hass, creator of the original hass avocado, barely made anything from it. I’m not gonna say that the Hass Avocado had more impact than Apple or Google, but it’s definitely more impactful than any $1-10 billion company I can think of.
- teaearlgraycold 2y ago
  Isn’t the story that some crazy old seed man gave him a Hass seed and we don’t really know where it came from?
  - b112 2y ago
    Such a Californian, colloquial tale. I'd had never seen an avocado in any grocery story growing up, never tasted it until I visited California. Is this "changing the world"? Well I suppose it could be, after all myriads of people have never used or even heard of slack.
codethatwerks 2y ago
You can fool yourself with money too. Often it is more profitable to do the unethical thing.

emseetech 2y ago

Less startup, more starting a business. The older I get the less I want to build a startup and more I want to start a business. Something that takes a little bit of capital, lots of hard work, gets some customers and provides goods or services, without venture capital firms and 100x returns and everything that comes with that, just a standard business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI1SLHEC98I

Solvency 2y ago
That's a romantic idea until you realize you're now dealing and subservient to the dredges of society, the worst kinds of customers, the worst kind of people. Far worse than a niche market specialized technology sales prospect. Get ready to have a new contempt for humanity. Get ready to be raked over the coals by Yelp.
- sandspar 2y ago
  Lol hell yeah brother my local coffee shop regulars are well known for being the dredges of society.
  - codethatwerks 2y ago
    Coffee shop? Customers fine, but health inspectors and rent increases are your antihero. As well as too much competition.
- boringg 2y ago
  Man you gotta get outside more often. Most of the world doesn't work in tech and has for thousands of years and surprise doesn't suffer from a new level of contempt for their fellow human.
- gnicholas 2y ago
  GP didn’t actually mention what kind of business (B2B or B2C, tech or another sector) — the description was broad enough to encompass my IP licensing business, which is about as tech-focused as it gets.

xhrpost 2y ago

https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

jh00ker 2y ago
"Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45" The link above links to the article I was going to post. Just adding the headline here, since it was missing.
garyiskidding 2y ago
Thanks, this is the link I've been looking for with regards to this thread.
halienm 2y ago
H

happytiger 2y ago

Wow, the older I get the more ambitious I get about what to build. A lot of the companies I created in my 20s and 30s I wouldn’t waste my time on in my 40s. I’m so the exact opposite it’s kinda funny. Go big or go home, it’s no fun to chew bones.

kamaal 2y ago
That Steve Jobs advice of saying no to a lot of things seems such a natural thing to do as you age. As years that remain shrink, you have to pick and choose the battles you want to fight.
- happytiger 2y ago
  That’s interesting. Aging hasn’t been limiting my thinking about time remaining. Maybe it should. It’s been pouring on the gas about enjoying the ride as much as possible instead. Worry less, lean in more, focus on defining a success that is yours in a way that’s deeply meaningful.

llm_trw 2y ago

>Also being older I don’t care about making a unicorn. I see that as an odd goal for a founder of any age but a great goal for an investor. Looking at the state of open source software today a google is simply impossible because the ecosystem has rotted from the inside. Look at how much effort it took to write the cgi-bin scripts google started with vs whatever flavour of the week JS framework you have to use now. Not sure what the solution is but we need fewer sheep in development and less permissive licenses so developers doing unglamorous work can capture more of the value. There's a reason why every shop which supports massive open source projects is running away from legacy licenses as fast as they can and that reason is Amazon. If you don't care about developers from the user side of things it's just as bad. The GPL in the age of cloud services does as much to protect user freedom as the MIT license did in the 1990s.

ramraj07 2y ago
Creating something from scratch is so much easier today than it ever was, and I’ve been creating crap for decades now. All the fancy JavaScript crap is purely optional. You can still write something in CGI if you want. My last prototype I wrote with Vue and JQuery and as pure html and .js files. It was an absolute blast! And the users loved it! Have you tested streamlit? FastAPI? Everything is so easy now.
- llm_trw 2y ago
  Today if I were to write a cgi script it would have to send json payloads to the JS front end because round trip latency on phones is between 100 to 500ms to hit a dns server. I was getting lower latency on dialup in 1996. On my desktop it's 2ms on a bad day. You can't just use HTML because browsers have mutated to fat clients for a X like protocol which is a mishmash of html, css, js, and whatever else someone's decided to throw on top of it. We're using screwdrivers as axes and everyone is acting like this is some type of acceptable outcome.
  - nicoburns 2y ago
    You absolutely can just use HTML. You're writing this on HN that just uses HTML and is one of the more responsive websites on mobile connections. You can't make as rich an interavtive experience as you can with JS, but you never could.

throwoutway 2y ago

Give yourself a break. When I studied in uni I was stuck at tables with 'old guys' and 'old ladies' and I had a lot of respect for them. They paid attention, wanted to learn, were there to learn. When I didn't understand something, I asked them before I asked the teacher and they generally were happy to help. I have fond memories

tomhoward 2y ago

There's a study that often gets shared around, purportedly "Debunking the Myth of the Young Entrepreneur", showing data that most successful startup founders start their companies in their mid-to-late 40s, including tech/social media companies. It depends a lot on how you qualify and categorise founders, companies and "successful", but of course you can understand why it can be somewhat truthful: people in their 40s have had 2-3 decades to build up experience, networks and a track record, making it much easier to build a team and attract investors and initial customers. I'm sure almost all of these founders in their 40s have had at least some partial success in their past. So it still affirms that it's best to start as young as possible, allowing time to experiment with ideas, markets, co-founders, etc. I've seen plenty of founders bounce from one-to-another-to-another startup from their 20s to their 40s, each one being vastly more successful than the last. But as you point out there are still all kinds of opportunities to build new products to address needs that are overlooked by younger founders, so you should absolutely go for it if you're inspired. I feel the same as you about being less interested in "unicorn"-scale success after 40; as you mature, have kids, experience illness in your family and become more observant of problems in different segments of society, you become much more focused on just providing well for your family and doing some good for the world than having to be some kind of all-conquering hero. If you want to connect privately to talk more about what kind of company you want to build and how best to go about it, feel free to get in touch (email in bio).

luc4sdreyer 2y ago
> "Debunking the Myth of the Young Entrepreneur" There might be others, but this one is clear and to the point: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-successful-startup-founder-is-45 https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

mynameisnoone 2y ago

Same boat here. I would suggest using your network and consider a path of least resistance such as building a side-business while working that either solves niche enterprise problems or makes enterprise capabilities more manageable for small businesses. Starting a business is really easy. The bullshit that every business needs to do isn't particularly magical or mysterious. Don't get too invested in the bureaucratization process, but also be sure to implement what needs to happen just in time. Find cofounders from your friends and coworkers, and go to startup events. Find people who you respect and who respect you, have integrity, and are the most fun. It's important to find people who don't turn into arrogant SOBs or raging sociopaths when large sums of money become involved. Honesty, awareness, navigating/prioritizing ambiguity, and conflict resolution skills are damn important. Avoid external funding if at all possible unless it unblocks time-to-market that would otherwise miss market time or grow too slowly to survive. (Growing slower is often easier and more sustainable!) Have sensible cost controls that are pennywise and poundwise. If not changing the world or building a startup per se, focus on building a business that something people want. ;@] Expect it to take 20x longer, 50x more effort, and 4x more money than you think.

idkdotcom 2y ago

[dead]

eggdaft 2y ago

Sounds like you might want to start a lifestyle business. You should read and listen to everything by Rob Walling, especially his “stair step approach”. Wish someone had told me this at your stage. For meeting founders, find someone in the area you’re interested in and build stuff with them. Also consider using the YC founder network, but they may be too ambitious for you. Lifestyle businesses are probably less dependent on cofounders for success. You’ll need to work hard at your tech skills if they’ve atrophied. The good news is, this part is incredibly fun.

rwalling 2y ago
Here are a couple links if you want to get started with my work, all focused on bootstrapping profitable SaaS companies: [Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping] https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-bootstrapping/ https://robwalling.com/2015/03/26/the-stair-step-method-of-b... [Podcast] https://startupsfortherestofus.com https://startupsfortherestofus.com [Book] https://saasplaybook.com https://saasplaybook.com [YouTube] https://microconf.com/youtube https://microconf.com/youtube
- atentaten 2y ago
  Anything on B2C?
- eggdaft 2y ago
  Classic Hacker News moment. Thanks Rob, love everything you do! Your recent SaaS Playbook is awesome.

navane 2y ago

I think PG addresses this subtlety where he says: "when you're young it's easier to know what you are interested in, than what people need." This inverts as you get older.