As brilliant as young coders are, the industry can’t survive on technical chops alone. Unsplash/Markus Spiske
This mindset goes beyond just a perception issue. The foremost reason for failure in startups is that they don’t meet a market need. In my opinion, more seasoned folks tend to build solutions for problems and the less experienced have a tendency to build solutions for, well, fun? Take Clinkle’s 24-year-old CEO who raised about $30 million to build a mobile wallet that allowed users to earn “treats,” which I can’t say really solved much of a market need.
Young founders can do some incredible things, of course. Their fresh perspective, energy and naïveté prime them to revolutionize industries. However, young people play at the most extreme point of the risk-reward spectrum. All-or-nothing ideas frequently crash when founders have no business experience, but the 24-hour news cycle covers those stories and cements the notion that young is always better.
Battling Ageism in TechOlder founders are finally getting a crack at the industry for one simple reason: the democratization of tech. Speaking of Silicon Valley, recent years have given older founders another new advantage: thanks to better technologies, anyone can start a company from anywhere. This tech migration outside the Bay Area has been well-documented, and older people wanting to solve industry problems now have the resources and opportunities to do so without moving across the country.
As a whole, entrepreneurial communities also need to do more to bring diverse groups to meet-ups, panels and speaking engagements. The importance of having more voices at the table can’t be diminished.