> "Among the very fastest-growing new tech companies, the average founder was 45 at the time of founding."
However, the deciding factor appears to be experience:
> "founders with three or more years of experience in the same industry as their startup are twice as likely to have a one-in-1,000 fastest-growing company."
I'm the author of the post. I think you've discerned the central tension I was exploring here.
Part of what I'm identifying is a simple truth: in your 40s, you don’t have that same kind of “raw firepower” you had when you were younger.
That doesn't mean you can't still be ambitious or leverage your accrued wisdom, network, and resources to launch a company; it just means the dynamics are different.
Generalizing always misses things. I'm 65, and until recently, sometimes worked 15 hour days with no breaks. I value "being able to work" increasingly more with each passing year.
It's possible only because I've a had a lot of years to learn and experiment with how to have MORE "firepower". I had so many health issues when I was younger, I couldn't accomplish much. It affected my life goals and perspective tremendously. At the same time, if I don't do enough things right now, I suffer faster. Even with my issues at a younger age, I could get away with much more when I was younger.
I'm only 30 and honestly, sometimes I sit down at a side project and think "How the heck did I just sit here and grind out this entire desktop application" when now I'll struggle to work on it for an hour at a time.
Part of it is motivation in that it went from being a personal project I use to something others primarily use but I also constantly ask myself "Is this really what I want to spend my time on" which was never really a thought back then when it was just fun (and something I needed)
Not exactly the same but echoes of the raw firepower thing where it's easy to fully commit if you either have nothing else or you're fully sure of your dedication otherwise you're sort of one toe in the pool and aren't sure whether to save your energy
> Part of what I'm identifying is a simple truth: in your 40s, you don’t have that same kind of “raw firepower” you had when you were younger.
I wish this self-harming myth would stop being repeated as a "simple truth". It's a simple falsehood. It comes from a 100-year old idea about scientific productivity, that science (and specifically mathematics) is a young person's game. This has been widely debunked for many decades now.
The reality is that a lot of people use this myth to not admit the fact that they burned themselves out and lost their drive. Then they don't take care of their mental health and use this unscientific nonsense as the excuse for why things went wrong.
I see it in colleagues all the time in science. Some burn out, others get far better, smarter, and can get things done that they couldn't have a decade before. It has nothing to do with wisdom, network, resources, etc.
"In a study published in the journal Nature Aging in August, a team of Stanford scientists described “waves” of aging, where major biomolecular shifts happen in the body around ages 44 and 60."
> I wish this self-harming myth would stop being repeated as a "simple truth".
In an industry that exploits a pool of young workers, paying them less but assuring them that they're smarter and their skills are more up-to-date than those middle-aged coders of yesteryear, it's still effective rhetoric.
The WCC is just a tournament though, and the winner isn't always the best player. In 1993 for example Kasparov split from FIDE, and nobody thinks of FIDE's champions as "real" until Kramnik brought the titles back together in 2006. Meanwhile Kasparov lost a match and his title to Kramnik in 2000, but remained the highest rated player until he retired. And Magnus outranked Anand for years before bothering to contest the championship.
The top three classical players today are in their 30s (with Arjun right there behind Fabiano and Hikaru). The most impressive to me though are Anand in his fifties and Aronian in his forties, in the 10th and 11th spots. And then of course there's speed chess, where the youngsters are barely competitive.
I do think youthfulness can mean better performance, but don't forget that in modern times youth development has been much more optimized than ever before so the youth have advantage of that, getting the best development while the brains are most plastic to improve.
I'm the author of the post. I understand where you're coming from, but you're missing the nuance I mentioned in the article.
First, many "B2B" products are widely used by individual consumers for personal projects. For example, I've used Canva for family birthday cards and Mailchimp for my family newsletter. Running groups use Slack. Couples use Notion to plan their family calendar.
Second, today's line between "consumer" and "small business" is blurry. Is a YouTuber a consumer or an "aspirational business owner?" What about a freelance writer or a hobby podcaster? The prosumer movement is changing traditional definitions: users often start as consumers and evolve into businesses over time.
Third, the traditional B2B attributes (long sales cycles, demos, etc.) often don't apply to modern, self-serve software products. The buying process looks more like B2C: individual buyers with a credit card decide what to buy based on personal preference, brand, friendship groups, etc.
Finally, how useful is it to use the term "B2B" when it describes a solo freelancer buying project management software or a Fortune 500 company investing in enterprise-wide solutions? Are we lumping together the indie creator purchasing a $10/month tool with the government agency signing a million-dollar contract?
Products like Canva, ChatGPT, MailChimp, Carrd, Transistor, Fathom Analytics, Trello, Slack, Notion, and Tailwind UI achieved success by broking out of the traditional B2B mold and serving a broader spectrum of users with a single, versatile product.
I think this is just more of knowing your market but still b2b. For example, I know of many b2b products that market to individual team-leads. They price themselves to be easy to expense by a team lead, but once more teams adopt the product, they switch into enterprise pricing/sales tactics.
There are some parts of the world where b2b has different laws around invoicing, payment terms, etc. from b2c. For example, here in the Netherlands, I have to provide min 14-day terms on business invoices, along with very specific rules for those invoices. On b2c sales, I need to provide a return/refund policy that adheres to Dutch law, I can charge late fees, and I can have the consumer pay up-front.
So, I get your nuance, but sometimes the law doesn't give us the freedom to use it... or we don't want to because then it introduces legal nuance that can be bad for business.
Everything said here about LinkedIn is also true on X.com (Twitter).
As Elon posted in 2023:
> "Our algorithm tries to optimize time spent on X, so links don’t get as much attention, because there is less time spent if people click away. Best thing is to post content in long form on this platform."
XSLT has a ton of value, especially if we want a more diverse/robust web.
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