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Comment by DodgyEggplant | Hacker News Reader

A co-founder is also the minimum social proof. Find at least one person in the world who is willing to bet on you and your startup.

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Yeah, right. You forget: That is easy in college, but actually much more difficult later in life when all your friends have jobs and family. In other words, works in some way as a nicely worded age discrimination. Not that it affects me, but getting older makes you more sensitive for these things ;)

You presumably know far more professional developers at a later stage of your career than someone fresh out of university, so you have a far bigger pool to find someone out of.

Most of the people who are just finishing university and getting into YC aren't people who would be struggling to find jobs, these are people who are choosing to work for a startup over going to work for Google or Goldman Sachs for a six-figure salary.

The fact that someone older is more likely to have a mortgage and family commitments and thus be unable to relocate for three months and give up their salary is far more likely to weed out older candidates than the co-founder requirement.

The 25-year old knows that if his startup fails he can easily find a first (or new) job at Google etc two years later. That does not apply to 45+ year olds. The risk is much higher.

I don't get this, presumably by that point in their career they'd have a huge network of people they've worked with in the past and who would be eager to hire them ?

When you're at that point in your career you cost a lot more to hire and there are fewer positions, especially since it's usually better to promote an insider instead of hiring a buddy from outside the company.

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