replicatorblog

This is important. There's a big difference between getting started at 45 and founding your third company at 45.

I don't think there is something biological, or even social that makes it hard to be a late-bloomer in tech entrepreneurship. It's just hard to develop an entirely new skillset and network in later-middle age. I think we'd mostly be skeptical of a doctor who started medical school at 45, and while the stakes for founders aren't as severe, the same principle applies.

I've seen a lot of studies that make this assertation, but the fact that it's hard to think of many examples in the world of tech startups makes me skeptical.

Not the 20 best known, the 150 best known. I'd wager if you went 500 deep, you'd see the age being much closer to 30 than 45.

The criteria of this study isn't bad, but I'd much rather just see a list of companies they're defining as startups. Is there a big biotech contingent? Are consulting companies included? B2B vs. B2C? Inc. Magazine published a list of the 500 fastest growing companies every year, and there's very little overlap between that list and what we'd consider the world of tech startups. This methodology feels more like Inc.

Who is the most famous tech founder who was 45 or older when they founded their first company?

There were more in the 70s, 80s, or 90s (E.g. Jim Clark) because the industry was still forming, but even then the wunderkind college dropout drove most of the value creation.

In the modern era, Peter Gassner, founder of Veeva was 42. Diane Greene founded VMWare at 43. Brian Acton was 38. You start falling into the 30s fairly quickly.

And if we look in terms of value creation, the crazy outsize wins come from founder founders. E.g. the GAFA companies were all founded by sub-30s.

This study, like most of the Kauffman Foundation studies, tend to rely on obscure methods to reach these counterintuitive results. It's not to say 45-year-olds can't build great companies, but if you made a list of the 150-200 most notable tech startups of the last few decades, you'd see an average age closer to 33 than 45, even lower if you don't include the 2nd or 3rd startups of some founders.

If you're at all interested in a new industry, there is usually a podcast focused on that vertical where notable luminaries get interviewed. Listening to a few hours of shows, while doing chores or commuting, can get you up the learning curve fairly quickly.

And the tendency to prattle can be fairly helpful. It helps illuminate the thought process of the subject in ways you wouldn't get in more formal settings, or in the few sentences of quotations that appear in a press account.

There are a bunch of niche media sites that are seeing huge chunks of revenue coming from podcasts. E.g. the Ringer and Vox are both ramping up production significantly, doubling in the case of Vox, because the CPMs are so high. We'll see what happens when the venture capital streams propping up mattress, toothbrush, and meal kit startups dries up, but business model seems to be the least pressing issue at the moment.

Can anyone go to these free colleges in Europe? One of the problems in the US is that we assume that anyone should be able to go to college, so you have a bunch of non-selective schools that allow 50-90% of applicants to matriculate as long as they're able to pay.

As I understand the European systems, there are high-stakes tests that determine who gets to go to these colleges. Is that incorrect?

I can't get past the paywall, but the info looks a lot like the survey that circulated this summer. In that study, the researchers went through tax data and used tech companies that hired at least one employee as their proxy for a "startup."

This seems wildly flawed. It's the same methodological quirk that makes Kauffman data not so helpful.

I'd like to do a study that looks at some of the more common metrics of success in the startup community.

+ Top 100 companies tracked by Gartner

+ Top 100 Apps on Apple Store

+ Top 100 Websites measured by Quantcast

I've looked at sample that's pretty close to that and the average age is much closer to 30, and even artificially inflated by serial entrepreneurs who are on their third companies.

I think it has more to do with the fact that 3 of the 5 most important companies in tech are headquartered there have a combined $2.3T in market cap whereas Boston's biggest tech co's, TripAdvisor, Akamai, and Wayfair, have a combined market cap of ~$30B.

Boston has had at least one $1B+ tech IPO (not including bio) every year for the last decade. There have been as many High nine-figure, billion-plus acquisitions in the same period.

Boston doesn't get much in the way of national PR, but it's arguably the 2nd best city in tech, measured by liquidity over the last decade, in the country.

And not just in boring security/B2B areas. Wayfair is a top 10 ecommerce player. CarGurus has thoroughly beat TrueCar. DraftKings created its category.

My firm is an investor in Embark (https://embarkvet.com/), whichh is basically 23 & Me for Mastiffs. If you want to understand the delightful world of doggy DNA, there is no better destination.

If you don't like what Amazon is building, just wait until all those contracts start going to Raytheon and Northrop! I appreciate the moral quandary these engineers are faced with, but there is something to be said for being a responsible steward of technology. I've met quite a few MIT Ph.D.s who nonchalantly mention their roles as, what sounds like to me like "Program manager for raining fire and destruction on third-world countries systems." Someone is going to write the code, I kind of hope it's done at companies like Amazon where there is some ability to publicly pressure management vs. defense contractors who are largely unaccountable to the masses.

I think people forget how inconsequential Instagram seemed at the time Facebook bought it. It was popular and growing fast, but the notion that this 12-person startup was worth a billion dollars was laughable. Read contemporaneous accounts and many reporters were incredulous. It was prima facie evidence of a bubble.

I don't know if a regulator would have had the foresight to see Instagram, which was still as much known for its filters as its social network as anything but a compliment? Look at how Instagram was seen as one of many similar products at the time:

https://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/instacrt-puts-all-other-...

https://lifehacker.com/5970648/five-best-photo-filter-apps

An early rival, Hipstamatic, was named the Apple App of the Year in 2010: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/09/apple-top-apps-2010/

Insta has taken on a life of its own over the last 2-3 years, but if they had chose to go their own way, whose to say Facebook wouldn't have clobbered them, in much the way they nuked Foursquare.

I'm not opposed to regulation, per se, but we should also be careful not to indulge in revisionist history.

An excellent, important product — and stellar branding! While this product is a massive technical improvement, its biggest value might be getting couples to think about fertility earlier.

I admit as a career-minded professional, I underestimated how quickly the reproductive window closes biologically and how much higher the risks are for Mom and baby as the years pass.

My wife and I went through IVF and learned quite a bit, e.g.: You may have to wait a year before an insurer will begin to cover treatments or you may have to scrounge for cash to pay for them. Once you find a clinic, there's a multi-month process to get started. Maybe you miss a dose of the IVF drugs due to an illness and have to postpone for a cycle or two. In the case of IVF, you may not get viable embryos or they may not implant. If they do implant, there's a scarily high risk of miscarriage.

And if you want to have more than one child you need to factor in the 40 weeks of pregnancy, recovery, and adjusting to sleep deprivation before you get to start the whole process again. On their own, these are small delays, but compounded they can take up years, and if you're starting in your mid-30s and working with a five-year window, they can make the difference.

It took my wife and me two years of financially and emotionally draining treatments before we had success. Our second run was smoother, but our first child was diagnosed with Leukemia (she's good now) at the start of my wife's 2nd trimester. Had we waited another quarter, it's very likely we would only have had one child. I can say unequivocally in my career there has been no bonus, promotion, or professional recognition that comes close to matching that value.

Despite our challenges, we were lucky. We met a couple that struggled with infertility. Turned out after a lot of testing, the husband was sterile. The wife wanted to carry a child from an egg of hers fertilized by a donor. The man didn't want to raise a child that wasn't his biological offspring, so they split and she had to renter the partner market in her mid-30s under extreme time pressure.

Apologies for the overly personal PSA, but I wish I had this information in my twenties. If you want children, you need to treat the process with all the seriousness you treat your career. This product is a great tool to do so.

This is the most under-discussed issue in the loan debate. There are so many schools with dubious programs that fail to place graduates in careers that justify the outlay that have a nearly unlimited access to capital via these loans.

This is a really important point. Often, elite discussions about the importance of college come from people who fondly remember their time at Harvard, and not those burnt by "schools" like the Boston Architectural College which has a 100% acceptance rate and charges $20K a year, Or Suffolk University which can barely hold onto its accreditation, but charges $37K a year to study "international business."

By bucketing all these experience together as if they're the same experience does a tremendous disservice to those who can least afford to make a six-figure mistake.

Other Western nations also don't allow everyone to go to college and aggressively track students into vocational programs at an early age. Not saying that's bad, per se, but implementing that approach in the US would create new and different uncomfortable trade-offs.

I 100% agree with this advice. I think one challenge is that now that the military has essentially become a soldierly caste in American culture, and one that's heavily concentrated in specific geographies, many don't know about what's involved with a career in the armed forces. It's not for everyone, but it would likely be a better decision for some major chunk of the population who'd otherwise flail in a college environment.

At Ivies and other top 20 schools, I'd agree. Maybe even the top 50. Beyond that, I think the American Pie stereotypes are closer to the norm than you might think.

All good points. My co-worker drives from medford, despite being just a few miles away, it's a 30-40 minute drive. I've never lived in the southern part of MA, but Google Maps still makes it look like an hour-ish drive from either of those towns.

I'm not complaining, just noting that it's the tax of working in cities with a lot of economic activity. The major alternative is moving to a smaller city with fewer job options, but higher quality of life, e.g. Salt Lake City, which only has 3-4 unicorns, but balances that with 5 minute commutes to gorgeous new construction. Pick your poison!

$500K budget. 3-beds. Strong public schools. Condo/Townhouse are fine. I'm looking at Acton, Westford, and Andover. Any recommendations would be great.

My larger point is I used to live in the 4th largest city in the US and could afford a relatively new, relatively nice house for a pittance, a short distance from my office. I could spend more or less for a better school district, or use the savings for a private school.

Boston and SF seem happy saying "Good schools, affordable house, hellish commute - choose 2" to their residents.

Depends a lot on your definition of affordable. Assuming a budget of $500K, a desire for 3-bedroom+, a commute to Boston/Cambridge, and access to a strong school system, these are the towns I'd consider:

+ Acton: there are a couple dozen 1,500 sqft. split levels that come on the market per year. Good commuter rail access to the red line. Top 20 state school system.

+ Andover/Burlington/Frankling are all top 50 school districts, have a limited selction of affordable, though mostly much older houses. You're still looking at an hour to boston, but if you want to work at Oracle, iRobot, Philips, etc. you'll be right there.

+ Westford: You'll find a decent stock of older 1,000-1,500 sqft. places. Top 20 state school system. Horrible commute into Boston proper, but not bad if you work on the 95/128 belt.

Medford and Malden are gentrifying, the former more quickly than the latter, but you're making a pretty big trade-off in terms of school quality.

If your office is walking distance to South Station, or North Station, there are some farther flung suburbs with commuter rail access that would be workable. E.g. Newburyport has a cool seaside vibe and a commuter train into the heart of the city, though you're looking at an over an hour of travel time.

Southern NH is iffy. Windham is the main town for families, has reasonable prices and houses go very quickly in terms of sales. Salem, Hampstead, Pelham, Derry, Londonderry, not so much. You could theoretically commute from Nashua, but that seems insane to me.

If you can afford something in the $750K range you'll find ok townhouses in hip cities like Somerville and Arlington. That sum will get your foot in the door of a fixer-upper in tonier towns like Winchester and Lexington.

As you might be able to guess, I'm in the market as well, so if you've got any advice on hidden gems of towns, I'm all ears :)

Serious question, what towns would you recommend. I don't deny I'm making a consumer choice, and said so in my comment.

When I lived in Houston, I lived in a beautiful flat, a 20 minute walk from my office, and did so making the equivalent of $18/hr. I can't think of many places that'd be possible in the Boston area.

FWIW, this is also true in Boston. I commute from southern NH to Harvard Sq. every day. Unless you have two substantial incomes, or are ok with sub-par schools and a tiny space, it's hard to live close to most economically dynamic cities.

I'd be curious to ask the author,

+ Have many of your laid off peers had trouble finding work, post-layoff?

+ Do you think you'd have a difficult time finding another job if you were laid off?

Most people in tech, who are willing to live in one of a half dozen specific cities, have job security prior generations could only have dreamed of. Tech skills are far more portable than a skilled line worker at Ford's River Rouge plant in the 1960s, where job-hopping was nearly impossible due to union senority regulations.

I work at a VC firm and every company struggles with hiring enough talented people. I don't know many, really any, people who are moderately skilled and unable to find work in this environment. That could change if there's a big macro swing.

That's not to say the broader criticism of job security is wrong. I have plenty of 50+ family members that are struggling on the finish line to retirement. Other people in my circle never had a fair shot at the start, but I don't know that there's ever been a better time to be a member of the professional class, even at a mid-skill level.

This is an excellent point. I don't think I've read an account of the TRU fiasco from the POV of a person with kids. By my read, TRU's problem isn't debt or Amazon, but changing substitutes. E.g.:

+ YouTube + Amazon: Lets kids see what a toy looks like in HD, whereas previously you'd need to go to a store to see the big images on the box, or to press the "try me" buttons. As you said, the brand drives most of the sales, so the store experience adds little.

+ Advanced Supply Chains/McDonalds: The toys in Happy Meals are insanely nice, I wouldn't be surprised to see them retail for $5-10 at a toy store. High-quality toys are throw-ins for a lot of stores now, obviating the need for a special purpose store, save for Christmas/Birthdays.

+ YouTube + Grocery Store: The rise of Surprise Eggs over the last few years has been astounding, to the point that a decent amount of our toy budget is spent at the checkout line at the grocer, where these eggs are increasingly on offer.

+ YouTube + DIY: The explosion in popularity of DIY slime is another development where tactile time is invested in a project rather than a packaged toy.

+ Apps: The YouTube Kids app and the many thousands of quality games on offer in the app store are great substitutes for plastic junk.

No doubt debt played a role, but I think almost every story has underplayed massive changes in the toy market that are an additional headwind to the industry.

Not a proper tech talk, but hearing Ben Chestnut talk about the early days and growth of MailChimp stuck with me.

https://vimeo.com/34081566

Bootstrapped to over half a billion dollars in revenue. Worth many multiples of that. Built it Atlanta, not a startup city. B2B, but with a more creative ethos than most VC-backed startups in SF. Just an extraordinary story, well worth the hour it takes to watch.

Reading about municipal finance makes the freewheeling world of VC look positively conservative. E.g. there's this concept of a "13th check," at the end of the year in many poorly run cities. Basically, and surplus growth in the city's retirement funds were distributed to pensioners as a sort of annual bonus, rather than left in the general account to help make up for eventual shortfalls.

http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2013/10/10_thing...

There's a serious moral hazard for politicians. It's easy to give constituents services today at the expense of benefits in the future, when they'll be out of office. I wonder if a law that clawed back these government official's pensions if they were found to break from good accounting practices, would be a deterrent?

So terribly sorry for your loss.

The conflation of job types in this piece undercuts its thesis, which I think it pretty good advice.

Seeking out a career in a kitchen, the entertainment business or any other "tournament profession" is high-risk and likely to leave you with few skills the market will reward.

On the other hand, getting a Ph.D. in life sciences seems like a pretty fool-proof path to the upper-middle class. Sure, you may not be a Nobel Prize winner, but I'd imagine in the worst case, you'd be pretty employable by pharma companies.

The other examples are a bit weirder. The people who love to fly recreationally typically aren't the ones manning the red-eye, or ferrying air freight from Shenzen. In most cases, they're "Post-economic" if they can afford to learn.

Likewise, I'm not sure anyone goes into the forest service for money.

Anyway, the author makes a good point, but muddles it with poor examples.