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Under 30 and On The Cutting Edge
conq writes "BusinessWeek has an interesting piece on cutting edge technology entrepreneurs under 30. From the article: 'Don't look at what the industry is doing,' Erchak says. 'Look at what they're not doing and focus on that. That's where the real disruptive technology comes from.'"
;-)
Get out there and do interesting things people. Stop making window managers, CMS systems and text editors and start making new things. Things that are useful.
The two new ones are a simulator for pharmaceutical development and a new approach to solid state light sources. Those may or may not work, but they're real developments.
Me too. They ruin everything. They had their fun; free love, relatively safe drugs, protesting, Woodstock...
Now they're all old fuddy-duddys', and making everything they did for fun against the law.
It's no wonder todays youth is resorting to crystal meth and bot-nets. Easy sex, easy marijuana, and good music has been ruined by the grups!
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
So does this mean that if you're over 30 you don't have a chance at creating anything innovative?
I curse all those Baby Boomers who made being older than 30 a bad thing
Actually, no. If you consider that the 'baby boom' generation was born between 1945 and 1960, then the bb's are all well over 40 now. You can thank the baby boomers for phrases like: "40 is the new 30".... now you're even hearing: "50 is the new 30". They don't want to get old, so they keep changing the threshold.
From the article...
What's the most common error made by startup entrepreneurs?
Easily the biggest problem is when you have a founder who is sentimentally attached to his company to the point where he won't let go and accept help. Especially with technology firms, the founder tends to be passionate about the product and tends to come out of an educational-engineering environment with very little expertise in the business world.
This is so true- whether in business or on message boards (like this). I got my start in tech, but went on to get a JD and a MBA- and now my true techie friends love to make fun of me. But the truth is, hubris can sink about anything- Knowing a lot about tech does not mean that you know anyting about business (and vice versa)
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
Having been involved in a number of successful businesses over the years, I can tell you that good ideas are a dime a dozen. There's no huge mystery about what's successful and what isn't... look around you.
The difference between someone who is successful and someone who isn't is execution. The world is full of people who dream big but don't get off their ass and do it.
What people don't get is that you don't have to be the dominant player on the block to make a LOT of money, but what it does require is taking a risk and putting yourself out there. Find your little niche and set up shop. The world is like a raging river of money. You don't have to set up a very big flume to get a pretty good stream coming to you.
And if (or when...) you fail the first couple of times, learn from your mistakes, get back up and try again.
Just a step at a time, folks. Just take a step a time. It's not how fast you're stepping, but the fact that you're stepping at all.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
There are people who are technically gifted and are chrismatic enough to sell whatever it is they're working on but they're few and far between.
A few simple rules:
(1)know your product and be able to explain it to investors who might not have the technical training to immediately grasp what it is you're proposing. Stay away from the trap too many technical trained people fall into of overwhelming potential investors or customers with unnecessary detail, (I failed this test repeatedly).
(2) Have a business plan and enough money to go 5 years without outside investors. Many government agencies provide templates that will allow you to lay out a business plan that a banker or investor can easily understand. Don't go to a bank or potential investor with a bunch of loose papers and a lot of hand waving. Most businesses I've seen fail went into business looking to turn a profit in the first year. Statistics show the vast majority of businesses need at least five years to break even.
I'm currently about to undertake development of two ideas that I've worked on for the last ~5 years. I'm fairly sure both will succeed. As per the article both of my ideas are innovative and not visible on the web today, but along with the innovation I've spent a few years laying out a plan, both as to actual development and marketing. You must know why your project will succeed, you should know what might cause it to fail.
And then there's luck, just being in the right place at the right time.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
This tripe from Business Week is just another paean to the cult of youth, a slap in the face of those who've actually been around a while.
People forget that the "under 30" crowd was responsible for some of the stupidest, lamest, and most ridiculous excesses of the dot bomb. The recipe for dot com success was to only hire "young" (under 30, RCG) developers, because you "can't teach an old dog new tricks". It didn't work then, and it's still stupid now.
The best development environment is a mix of young, middle aged, and older developers. The elder developers season the brashness of youth with experience (and pointing out why web businesses to just sell 50# bags of dog food are stupid), and the younger ones inspire creativity where the elders had become complacent.
Would you trust a 25 year old bank president? Would you want to drive a car designed totally by a 22 year old recent college grad without the benefit of verification by a senior engineer? I wouldn't. So why in the hell should our software and computer hardware be only the product of young minds?
Business Week should know better than to shill for the "young is best" nonsense. We've seen where that crap leads - I read lots of articles just like it in 1998 and 1999. For shame.
BTW, I'm 44, and I said it was stupid the last time this "concept" got touted too - seven years ago...
use Sig::Witty;
I'm 36, and been programming professionally for 10 years, been part of 2 failed start-ups and 2 corporate layoffs.
After watching other managers' hits and big misses for 10 years, and learning a lot about computer programming and marketing along the way -- only *now* do i seriously feel i have the chops to take a shot at building a successful product. But will I do it?
That's where the youthful enthusiasm comes in. Youthful enthusiasm and being under 30 is great because you don't have a wife and a mortgage payment yet. Like Steve Jobs said, "stay hungry and stay foolish". You have to be pretty "foolish" to leave a great paying programming job to take a shot on the next "digg.com" -- try telling that to you wife -- "but honey, when i get 50,000 visitors a day, *then* i'll figure out how to pay the mortgage".
For every Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who made it big under 30, there's a thousand guys who failed a dozen times.
More power to you, entrepeneurs -- I may join you one day. Just have to get a little more foolish first.
boxlight
there are cutting edge developers over the age of 30, why are they not being covered as well? Yet again, another discrimination issue.
Note, I am a cutting edge developer over the age of 30, and I know of many others as well.
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Has any of those mighty business analyst ever thought, that there might be a good reason why things are the way they are? That perhaps all those people doing business now aren't complete idiots and actually have some idea what they're doing and aren't waiting for a bunch of college kid to tell them how the world works?
Where are all those so-terribly-bright entrepreneurs from the 90s today? Most of them are failures and learned the hard way that the ideas outside the box have been kicked out of the box because they don't work. Very clever to tell people to sift through the intellectual refuse instead of learning from other people's experience.
And before launching into the search of the next disruptive technology, one should first check how many came along in the past 20 years. I guess there were no more than 5 worldwide, the rest were just millions of little evolutionary steps from within the box.
Good business sense would mandate to send your potential competition on a wild goose chase for the next disruption while going on working the established market with proven ideas.
Actually, my point is that you DON'T need to find something that "nobody else is filling". It's incredibly hard to find totally virgin territory. If you're waiting for that to happen, you'll probably have a very long wait.
The play with a much higher probability of success is to find a niche with a lot of demand. The fact that there are a lot of players making money there means that it's a successful niche! The trick is to find a way to elbow your way into your share of the business (that's also called "marketing"). Of course, you want to choose a niche that you're good at.
Take Internet hosting companies. Tons of 'em, right? Well, that's because the market is big enough to support tons of them. You don't have to reinvent the idea of a hosting company to have a successful little business with recurring income. That's just an example -- there are lots of little businesses like that.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Been saddled with too many jobs where I get pushed into a corner, loaded with completely unreasonable goals, been blocked at every angle by the management when trying to meet those goals, and then been pushed out the door. Maybe I'm the only one treated this way. It's been my experience that promotions and advancement are best modelled as a clique. If you weren't selected to be in the clique when you walked in the door then there's no chance.
Hey... feel free to prove me wrong. Show me a job where the management gives me the tools I need to meet the goals they set. Show me a job where I can put in two years of outstanding performance and be able to ask for a raise without getting the usual,"You should be lucky just to have a job!" So far the only experience that I've had is the same that American colonists received when they were employed in the British military: happy to have you here, don't expect any recognition or thanks, if you ask for so much as a glass of water you'll be derided as a malcontent.
I don't burn out but it's been demonstrated to me over and over that burning out is what is expected of me. If I don't acquiesce to burning out then I get chased out the door. "You will submit to failure or else we will make you fail."
Nice.
The government itself is not stealing your liberties. Their new programs are enabling criminals who will.