"many people avoid starting startups because they're afraid of seeming irresponsible."
That's a great point and I think supports another one. Getting older is generally incompatible with founding a startup. Not always, mind you.
Point #1: Ramen profitability is a higher number the older you get. People generally accumulate obligations faster than they can get rid of them (loans, kids, wives, elder parents, houses, etc)
Point #2: Yours. It doesn't look irresponsible for most 20 year olds to punt normal life and build something crazy. "It's a phase, he'll learn a lot, and then grow out of it". A 40 year old will get a lot more flak for setting aside a cushy $200k/yr job for some wild idea.
Of course, older folk who manage to live lean and don't give a crap about what people think/say will do just fine... :-)
Point #2: Yours. It doesn't look irresponsible for most 20 year olds to punt normal life and build something crazy. "It's a phase, he'll learn a lot, and then grow out of it". A 40 year old will get a lot more flak for setting aside a cushy $200k/yr job for some wild idea.
I agree, but I'd s/40/25/. This is probably why so many successful startups were founded by college dropouts -- if you haven't graduated yet, people are likely to see whatever you do as a learning experience, but as soon as you graduate, there is an expectation that you will "start being responsible".
There're a bunch of counterexamples to that, eg. Blogger (Evan Williams was 28), ViaWeb (Paul Graham was 31), Zenter (founders were in their early 30s), RescueTime (founders are in their 30s), Flickr (founders were about 10 years out of college), Del.icio.us (Joshua Schacter was 29), etc.
I'd say the real cutoff is whenever you have kids. Even that's not a hard cutoff (one of the Zenters had a kid right before they were accepted to YC), but it makes it a lot harder.
Having a kid makes life more regimented (good for startups), a bit less flexible if you're on a "managers schedule", and more expensive.
Risk tolerance is much lower with kids. That's probably the biggest reason more people don't start companies. In those cases, I'd recommend becoming ramen profitable in a side project to a real job, and then swapping them out.
Sadly true. I'm (almost) 42 and am trying to build a startup. Unfortunately it's still far from being profitable, and I live in a place with no angel investors or VCs available, so I need to keep a day job while coding my app late at night when everyone else (wife and two kids) fall asleep.
In my case, to be "ramen profitable" means that the monthly profit is equal to my monthly salary, which is currently at about 4000 USD.
That's a great point and I think supports another one. Getting older is generally incompatible with founding a startup. Not always, mind you.
Point #1: Ramen profitability is a higher number the older you get. People generally accumulate obligations faster than they can get rid of them (loans, kids, wives, elder parents, houses, etc)
Point #2: Yours. It doesn't look irresponsible for most 20 year olds to punt normal life and build something crazy. "It's a phase, he'll learn a lot, and then grow out of it". A 40 year old will get a lot more flak for setting aside a cushy $200k/yr job for some wild idea.
Of course, older folk who manage to live lean and don't give a crap about what people think/say will do just fine... :-)