Founders are our generation's novelists. They buck the system. Strike out on their own path. But the road is treacherous. We listen intently as The Winners reminisce about the hard times - a failed venture capital round, maybe even a last-minute pivot at the end of their funding runway - and wish we had taken those chances. "But I have a family now. And property. And debt." Life gets complicated. Risks have real consequences. Finally comes the nostalgic, regretful admission. "I should have tried when I was young." After accepting our demise, we eagerly grab hold of the nearest young person. Choking down our own regrets, we shriek, "YOU should take risks while you're young. It's the only time you can!" --- Before I continue, I must first make a confession. I founded a start up in high school. There I go again, playing fast and loose with the word "founded." What I really mean to say is that I sat in a garage for a few months cursing at the Facebook API documentation and reading tech news. Oh, and there was a shitty incubator in the mix somewhere. And a heap of embarrassing Ruby code. I was serious. I even wrote a college essay about the experience. A year later at university (that essay having convinced at least one admissions officer), I discovered how cliche my story was. To my surprise, many of my new classmates wrote remarkably similar essays... we were all founders! Yeah, I admit it. I was a wantrepreneur. But RISKS... --- Before and after my start up failure (at the time, failure was nearly as good as an IPO!), I was fortunate enough to work at real businesses. Indeed, they too were start ups, but their founders had three tangible qualities that I as a young person did not: *Experience*, *Connections*, and *Funding*. If the founders I worked for were not equipped in these three areas, their companies would not have succeeded. I can tell you right now, almost no young people have these qualities. And that's why I believe that you shouldn't start a company while you're young. --- Before a hard object is thrown in my direction, I'll play devil's advocate. "Aaron," you might say, "what about all of the wonderful things that are learned by founding a company." Sure. You learn a ton by founding a company. In my own example, I learned hard skills, such as how to write and test (poorly designed) Ruby and Python code and provision servers; as well as a few soft skills, like how to incorporate a company (aka hire a lawyer), coordinate work with a co-founder, and save face in front of investors after an embarrassing pitch. Those are interesting, but they were not unique to the start up experience. Programming, for instance, could have been learned more quickly in a classroom or job setting where I had someone to answer questions that I didn't even know to ask. Hiring lawyers just requires money, and pitching investors is not much different than demoing a new feature in front of management at an established company. I'm not arguing that nothing is learned by founding a company, only that there is more opportunity for young people to grow in an environment where there are mentors to learn from and mistakes don't have costly consequences. --- Now, let's address the three critical areas that most young founders lack.

Experience can be broken down into two broad categories: Soft skills and hard skills. Soft skills include, but are not limited to: networking, cohesive collaboration, resolving disagreements, hiring effectively, and managing employees. Hard skills include: programming, setting up infrastructure, selling product, allocating funds, and pitching to investors. Both categories are crucial to running a successful business, and if a founding team is severely lacking in any of these areas, it can jeopardize the company. Working as an employee in either the corporate or start up world gives you an opportunity to improve your hard and soft skills in an environment where you (most likely) won't lose your job if you trip up. The pace in a corporate environment may be slower, but it can also leave time for reflection and perfection. Most young people aren't experienced programmers, don't have the ability to sell an early stage product to an investor, and will frequently make rookie mistakes. Older founders, even if they are working on their first start up, have years of industry experience to draw upon. Even if that experience is too specialized or not in the same domain as their start up, general business experience itself can still make them more effective than a novice. In a start up, lacking hard skills like being able to sell or code efficiently can quickly kill your business. There is no shame in spending a few years in training before striking out on your own.

Connections in the start up world come in three primary flavors. Connections to potential customers, connections to quality engineers, and connections to money. In case you were wondering, yes, those are ordered in terms of relative importance. Most young founders I have met envision themselves starting the next great social networking site. Why social networks? I believe it is because we have a natural tendency to look for ideas and customers in the market we know best. Young people are drawn toward social networking ideas because they are the consumer. The underlying problem for these founders is that social networking plays, while easy to understand, are simultaneously some of the most difficult to execute on. The most striking contrast between the aged (as in fine wine) founders I've worked with and those my own age is that the older founders had 20+ years of industry experiences and connections to draw on when they built their business. Ideas sprang from problems they were unable to solve within the organizational structure of a corporation they previously worked for, and they could easily recruit the cream of the engineering and sales crop whose loyalty they had earned over many years of collaboration. Finding your first customers, usually a tremendous problem for young SaaS start ups, is easier by degrees when you have 20 years worth of late workdays and lunch meetings spent in the same room as your target audience. Your business model can even be guided by problems you yourself faced in the workplace. This alone is invaluable. And if you're smart, you may have even collected 20 years of favors to call in when it's time to find your first customers. On the financial side, older founders who save prudently can take less venture capital money, resulting in a bigger payday after an acquisition or (if you're really lucky) IPO. When experienced founders go looking for money, investors can use their track record in industry as another metric to gauge the company's likelihood of success. They have credibility.

When people think of start ups, the menacing words "venture capital" are not far behind. It's unfortunate that venture capital funding is such a prevalent part of the industry, because some companies would realistically be able to "bootstrap" their way to profitability on the founders money alone (I've worked in a few, and believe it or not, it's possible!). A depressing number of the young founders I have encountered only spend enough time developing their business as is required to get them in front of a venture capitalist. This is somewhat understandable. Without money, not much can be done by a non-technical founder in technology. But it is highly unlikely (today, nigh impossible) that you will receive venture funding off of only an idea without a proven track record. Older founders have two advantages here: First, they have the capability to save a significant amount of money before starting their business. This secures them living money while the business is starting, and also funds the company while it develops a product. Second, they have a track record that they can lean on to raise funding, and if they have already begun building their product, they may even have a few customer success stories as talking points. As was briefly touched upon in the "Connections" section, older founders can raise venture capital funding more easily if they have a proven track record and experience in the industry they are serving. Just this morning, I was browsing a few "Uber for private jet" companies. As I perused, I noted that the bio of every founder included a few sentences about their work in the air industry prior to starting the company. Their investors undoubtedly took this into account as they were deciding whether to fund the company. Young people and inexperienced founders often look for funding as soon as they have an idea, only refining that idea with feedback from VC's. Without a track record, a product, or sales, no sane investor is going to risk even a small investment on an unproven entrepreneur. Ideally, looking for investor funding shouldn't be a skill or massive time investment - it should play a small role in the much larger picture of building a successful business. --- Before I close, I should point out that I'm not advocating that young people should never found companies. Most of what people say about being young actually is true. You do have more free time, less obligations, and can sustain more risk, but those benefits aren't free. Being young comes with its own disadvantages, which I fear are too often overlooked by young founders and their (overly) supportive elders. If you are young, like I am, consider a longer term plan for starting a company; it's never too early to start saving. And if you're a little further on in life, maybe it's not too late to be a founder after all. --- Questions? The Hacker News comments are here.