What was the age of the oldest person admitted to Y Combinator?
It's one of those awkward late stage career things but I have a friend and colleague who is applying to Y-Combinator and wants me as a co-founder. We are both 53. Yeah I know it's illegal to discriminate on age but we all know it happens or it's enforced and they bring on someone mediocre to fulfill requirements. (I am an older person of color who has been through this kind of reception before. I wish people would look at my ability to do not my colour when hiring me.You are hiring me to do things not fill a colour quota.)
(
28 comments
| 4 points
| on HN
)
I feel it would be best to give you the truth directly.
2. Have you built anything or validated the idea in any way?
What exactly does the business need to spend money on? You can get a free/starter/subsidized version of just about every component of a tech stack.
It would be nice to know the answer to who was the oldest person, but at the same time, why does it matter?
We can't deny that ageism exists in the industry, you're not going to let that stop you from building your business, right?
Is there a benefit you get from age that younger people don't have? How are you going to leverage that to your advantage?
It really bemuses me as she has bootstrapped a confectionary business to over $100m. Sadly got trashed by the sociopath late stage growth investors who gave her back nearly nothing. Just like Dee Hock.
In filling in the application it became clear that they want young, "moldable" and want to establish a power relationship with the reader. I became clearly nauseas.
FWIW, when people get into YCombinator, the first lesson they drive home is to talk to users and ship product.
Build tech isn’t on that list.
People young and old, mess this part up.
My playbook used to be:
1) Have an idea 2) Identify any customers, Ideally one who is in a terrible emotional distress that they do not have that solution you have come up with. If you cant find one move on to another idea quickly. 3) Ask them if they want your solution - show storyboards. 4) Ask them to pay costs to build it and feed you ramen. 5) Ensure that the software, since they paid next to nothing for it, is yours. 6) Go sell it like Larry to a few more. 7) Show invetsor types once you start growing and getting longer contracts.
ACTUALLY HUGE KUDOS THANK YOU FOR THAT!!! Yes, exactly what I thought. She would do so well with another person who cares about the retail experience as much as she does. THANK YOU AGAIN!!! :-)
That's the perennial mystery of Y :) - how is it even possible to ship product before building the tech?
MVP i get. Tech free product I don’t.
Unless we are talking selling something that doesn’t exist.
If that money is the $500k from YC, how much difference is $500k going to make for your business?
If it's the valuation post-YC, what makes her think you can get there without the money?
BTW, my co-founder has the same attitude towards YC, and he's only in his 30s, but I'm the one pushing for us to apply. It can't hurt the business, but keep progressing as if you're not going to get in, because that is the most likely outcome anyway.
Maybe I'm sadistic, but I like doing the application, and have been doing them for over a decade now without an invite.
> We help founders at their earliest stages regardless of their age.
> 52% of YC's billion dollar company founders were under 28 years old and the oldest founder was in their 50s
I think I have solved for n.
n=1
One side of this is that startups are hard and demanding a lot of time and energy. Startups with other people’s money who are on a tight time frame to get a return on investment makes startups even more harder and even more demanding. Just by simple physics younger founders are better positioned to win on the demand vector. It’s about probabilities. Now an experienced founder who may have more obligations on their time and energy may still “win” on the demand vector but they have to skin the cat with some other ace up their sleeve that allows them to meet the time compressed demand needs of a startup.
HN loves to crap on DEI efforts, but, point-in-fact, not going with the flow (when the flow washes you away from capital, away from opportunity) is almost always an act of defiance and resistance. The endlessly-circulating idea that HR departments are handing things to you because you're 'diverse' is simply one more raindrop on your umbrella. Shake it off.
My understanding is that you're expected to do 3 months in San Francisco and that would stop most people with a family. Which is like most people over 30.
If you fit this model, I don't see why age would matter.
FTR, 4) tends to eliminate people over ~30. Also, my observation is that 1) favors the young who seem to have time to identify and play around with new tech in a way that older people typically do not, which would explain the median age of YC applicants, but not necessarily exclude applicants by age.