I kind of think I said the opposite. I said the kind of thinking that works for such start ups (you must admit plenty do exist) leach into companies where such thinking does not work. In fact, I said that the world is fueled by things like thermostats, medical devices and the like. We have plenty of start ups in the Bay Area (and the world) pursuing things like new medical devices. I get worried when some of them seem to borrow from the 20-something, brogrammer mentality, or equally (but oppositely), buy into silver bullet type things like agile or what have you. Everything has it's place; Jobs did not agile, pivot, and story point his way to the Macintosh, no one could have. OTOH, his approach would be death for somebody trying to test launch a really neat social app idea, where we would all be appalled if they weren't shipping weekly. Different tools for different jobs.
And so, back to the OP, and the frequent sentiments expressed on HN, there is value in engineering, a skill that is hard won and built over time, and there is value in knowing how to run a company (again, excepting a few savants, something that requires experience). Do not allow the existence of genuine counterexamples to cloud those facts.
Stop saying it, plz. It's not how old you are, but how old you sound.
(I'm 45, btw).